Arnhem

by John Nichol

  But, for Anje, in managing to conceal her true feelings of fear and horror from patients like him, there was a personal cost that she paid for the rest of her life. ‘I was just a young girl caught in the middle. I couldn’t really believe it was happening to me. A few days ago I’d been playing and full of hope that the war was nearly over. Now I was among the dead and wounded. I grew up so very quickly but it made a mark on my soul.’ Some of the losses were personal bereavements, shocking to a teenager. ‘My friend, Bytje, died last night,’ she recorded about a girl she knew who’d been brought to the Tafelberg. ‘A splinter hit her head and destroyed the skull. Her father stayed beside her until she died. Poor man. She was such a lovely girl and a good skater. Now we will never see her again. Another friend is here too and is severely wounded. A piece of shrapnel has gone right into her back. The doctors have given up hope. Both girls are seventeen, the same age as me.’

  She did the rounds, helping where she could. ‘I go to a Tommy who has lost both his hands, and I help him to smoke a cigarette. We talk about books, England and his home and we are away for a minute, out of this hell. For a while I sit in the cellar and listen to the shells and I know it is all in vain and hopeless. I am afraid all the time. I can’t bear the noise any longer and the knowledge that every shell kills people. Upstairs I take water to two patients on stretchers. One of them says he is sorry to be such a nuisance and sorry that Oosterbeek has been so badly damaged. They keep on saying they are sorry for me. Not their own lives, but our lives, our village, our future is what they are worried about. Even in this mess. They are excellent chaps but the situation is getting worse by the minute. The English still say Monty is coming. Are they really so naïve to think we still believe that? Or do they just say it to comfort us? But I do wonder why Monty doesn’t come to relieve these poor chaps of his who have been fighting for five days and five nights without sleep, food, water? They are so exhausted. It is too much. It makes me very cross.’

  The next day, Sunday – a whole week since the airborne invasion began and her world had gone mad – she was woken by enormous explosions and her courage melted away again. ‘I cry. I feel lost and alone and a little bit crazy. I don’t want to die, not now, yet we are facing death. We could well be killed in the next hour or so and be buried underneath the rubble. Daddy is desperate too for he has nothing left to treat people with and he feels a great responsibility for them.’ One of the army surgeons joined the casualties when a shell burst in the foyer and hurled him through the doors of what had been the hotel’s dining room but was now the hospital’s main ward. Curtis was scared too. ‘Our men were still doing their damnedest outside but the Germans were slowly closing in, though they had to fight like mad to gain every inch of that bloody ground. Suddenly there was an almighty explosion in a room on my right, and men already wounded once, twice even, were hit again. Some were killed.’

  From where he lay, next to a gaping hole that had once been a window, Curtis could see what was coming next. ‘Further enemy reinforcements were mustering, powerful, long-barrelled SS tanks armed with armour-piercing shells. Occasionally, an airborne man would break cover to stalk the enemy, and would be met by shell bursts and machine-gun chattering.’ He heard the squeak of tracks and then caught sight of a self-propelled gun trudging nearer. It stopped from time to time and its gun turret traversed ominously, seeking out a target. It blasted some anti-tank guns in the grounds, then turned its attention to the hotel building. ‘It stopped 100 yards away. I went cold. The gun slewed round until its gargantuan barrel was pointing right at me. As it bellowed out, I shut my eyes. I don’t know where the shell went exactly but I felt the draught as it came though a hole in the wall and sailed by.’

  The Tafelberg shook to its foundations, and so did Curtis. ‘The place was an absolute shambles, the floor littered with debris, blood and glass, plus the acrid smell of smoke and gun-cotton. I thought the entire building was going to tumble down. There were pitiful cries coming from a room that had taken the brunt of the attack and a medic came out cradling someone in his arms. I saw the medic falter, his eyes red, face drawn and dust covering his whole frame, which cried out with gross fatigue. Bracing himself, he picked his way through the forms on the floor. Unwittingly, his foot came in contact with an Airborne’s hand. “Sorry, lad,” I heard him say and the soldier on the floor muttered, “That’s all right,” before sinking into a coma. There was another resounding crash of bombs, followed by men’s voices loudly cursing the Boches.’ But those accusing voices were mistaken this time. A medic informed them that the last salvo had come from British guns – Second Army artillery was joining in all the way from Nijmegen. So that’s all right then. Curtis breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I thought they were Jerry shells, but they were ours!’ he told himself, though whether excitedly or sarcastically was difficult to tell.

  And, in truth, if men were encouraged by the thought that there were long-awaited reinforcements out there at last, it was not for long. Distant guns, however accurate, could make no difference now, with the Tafelberg surrounded and enemy tanks not miles but just feet away. The battle was lost, and, as those inside now realized, the only alternative to surrender was to prepare to die.

  Anje’s father chose life for her and for his patients, as did his British counterparts. ‘Daddy goes with an English doctor to the German headquarters to seek an armistice,’ she noted. ‘He carries an enormous red cross flag and wears a red cross helmet and a white coat. I catch a glimpse of him as they leave. Aunt Anke is afraid that he won’t come back. While they are away there is a terrible lot of shooting and we think he must have been hit. But then they all come back unhurt. They have had a terrible walk to the German headquarters but a truce has been agreed and for an hour there will be no shooting. This turns out to be nonsense as everything goes on as before and the Tafelberg is hit again and again.’

  There is worse to come. ‘Suddenly, the Germans are at the door. The monster has come back! I thought we were free and now we are occupied again, back under the German boot. The battle, the blood, the wounded, all the unbelievable courage, all the devotion, it has been for nothing. This was the worst moment of the war. Our British friends have to go and so do we. We say our goodbyes. I see Ken but all I can do is to squeeze his hand and smile.’ She never knew his surname, never saw him or Stan again and had no idea what happened to them.

  Inside the now-surrendered Tafelberg, the place teeming with German soldiers, this was a frenetic and frightening moment. Anje’s immediate concern, as it was for all the other Dutch civilians down in the cellar, was what vengeance the SS might exact on them. She had been scared for days but, as fire licked round the Tafelberg and the hated Moffen took charge, she was petrified. ‘We thought they might kill us all.’ The survivors of the Tafelberg waited, fearing these could be their last moments. ‘There is a lot of shouting and we are ordered upstairs to show our identity cards. There is panic amongst the men and the boys, lots of whom were in hiding from the Germans before all this started.’ They trooped nervously upstairs to the foyer and stood anxiously at the bottom of the hotel’s main staircase, waiting to see what would happen next. A local minister was with them and he stepped forward to ask permission to conduct a service. The Germans refused. Defiantly, he led everyone in a hymn anyway. ‘Abide with me,’ strained voices rang out, ‘Fast falls the eventide,’ sombre and uplifting at the same time. To Anje, to everyone, it was ‘a deeply moving moment. This is our last time with our airborne friends. Even the artillery outside keeps silent. It is as if a little bit of heaven has come down into this war.’

  Just down the road in the Schoonoord Hotel, Padre Pare was also seeking spiritual comfort for his flock, now in mortal danger too. It being Sunday, he was preparing a service. ‘There was a piano, and a soldier started to tap out two hymn tunes. Suddenly there came the most tremendous crash outside and dust flew everywhere. The road outside was being shelled. An orderly had been hit by a piece of shrapnel, and was breathing his
last. I laid my hand on his head, and commended his soul.’ This was the start of a barrage that lasted all morning. There was also a German sniper firing in at the wounded from a building opposite. ‘It was against the rules of war but no one could stop him. His bullets came in and made the patients squirm, but all we could do was keep our heads well down. A wounded RAF chap, who had baled out from his burning supply plane, was heard to state emphatically that he was an airman and had no desire to be in the Army, thank you very much.’ Yet all thoughts of rescue had not gone. Knowing little if anything about events in the outside world, ‘we still hoped the Second Army would come and relieve us. But in our hearts we knew that the situation was desperate. Casualties were still being brought in, and the water and food situation was going from bad to worse.’

  Something had to give. That afternoon, by agreement, German medical staff arrived in white-painted ambulances to evacuate the most serious cases and take them to a proper hospital in Arnhem. The enemy medics invited the padre to go too, and he accepted. On the drive to the St Elizabeth hospital, he witnessed the calamity that had befallen the city. ‘The road was littered with wrecked cars. Most of the houses we passed had their windows smashed, and some had been totally gutted.’

  The St Elizabeth, at which he now arrived, had been commandeered by the Airborne at the start of the operation, but for most of the ensuing battle was in the middle of German-held territory. SS officers were prone to marching in and trying to throw their weight about. But it remained largely a neutral zone, an island of mercy, staffed by a mixture of British and Dutch doctors, a German surgeon, German nuns, Dutch and English nurses, some Resistance fighters and a group of voluntary Red Cross assistants. Here heroic operations were performed under the most trying of conditions. Sometimes, German sentries stood guard in the busy and over-stretched operating theatre itself but, if the first incision didn’t send them packing, then the sight of the saw amputating limbs usually did. Pare toured its wards, jotting down the names of the wounded and offering words of comfort to each man. For all the misery and suffering there, he thought the place ‘a paradise’ compared with the ‘hot corner’ of the Schnoonord, to which he now returned. On the way back along those same rubble-filled roads, he saw, ‘to my great dismay’, more German tanks clanking their way towards Oosterbeek.

  That evening, the sounds of battle outside were noisier than ever and, as he took evening service, he could hardly hear his own voice. But he managed to make himself heard when he began to sing ‘Abide with Me’, and the wounded men joined in as best they could, or just lay listening. ‘God of the helpless, O abide with me’ – never, he concluded, were the words sung in a more appropriate setting. The text for his sermon was ‘Take no thought for the morrow,’ from St Matthew’s Gospel, and he believed it brought much-needed comfort. As he bade the men goodnight and left, a man beside the door began to sing, in a thin, shaking voice. ‘Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low/ And the flick’ring shadows softly come and go …’ An Irish ballad steeped in sentiment, ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ had brought an emotion-filled end to many a night round the piano at home or down at the pub. ‘Tho’ the heart be weary, sad the day and long/ Still to us at twilight comes Love’s old sweet song.’ Pare choked. ‘It was so full of pathos and the memory of peace at home that I could barely keep back my tears.’

  Back at the St Elizabeth, many of those recovering from their injuries saw clearly what was happening and were not prepared to let tomorrow take care of itself. One of these was Brigadier Gerald Lathbury, commander of 1 Para. He had been in the vanguard of Market Garden and fought hard to reach the bridge but had been turned back by fierce German resistance. Caught in mortar and sniper fire, he was wounded in the back on the second day of the operation. He was just a few hundred yards from the hospital at the time and carried there for treatment. His wound was not a major one, but there was no way back to his lines. From then on he was a reluctant spectator of the battle for Arnhem and Oosterbeek, trying to make sense of the noisy mayhem outside and what he could glean from talking to other casualties and the Dutch orderlies. He took the sensible precaution of concealing his high rank from the German nuns who cooked and cleaned, unsure of their loyalties. When SS officers toured the wards, he hastily took to his bed to stay out of their way. The last thing he wanted was to be deemed well enough to be shipped off to Germany as a prisoner of war. His debriefing of men still being brought in from the front line told him that things were going badly outside but that British forces were thought to be on the other side of the river, almost within reach. But it was no good waiting for them to get to him. ‘I made my arrangements to go,’ he noted. ‘The hospital was no place to stay in.’5

  It was one o’clock in the morning and drizzling with rain when he crept out into the unguarded hospital grounds on to the road and began walking as inconspicuously as possible in a north-westerly direction. ‘There were fires everywhere and it was dangerously light in consequence. Crossed the railway carefully, crawling under about seven trains. Felt very naked walking through the edge of town as fires lighted up everything.’ Then he was into the woods, grateful to be in the dark at last but having to plot his course with a compass through dense undergrowth. ‘Fences a nuisance. Got tired very soon.’ As it began to get light he could see around him scores of re-supply containers and parachutes, flown in at huge personal risk and loss of life by RAF pilots but to no useful purpose. He at least could make use of them and he picked up a tin of soup to have later. ‘It was pouring with rain. Not sure where I was.’ He rested up in the loft of a farm, too cold and wet to sleep.

  In the morning the weather was fine and he pushed on. He passed houses and gardens and saw several dead Germans but no British. He also spotted, he noted rather proudly, as if writing up nature notes, ‘two green woodpeckers, a red squirrel and a hedgehog’. Then, perhaps letting his guard slip in the glorious sunshine, he ‘got rather careless and walked on top of a German ammunition dump and had a narrow shave with the sentry. Had to make a big detour. Getting very tired. Very few houses now. Chose one and decided to risk it. Struck very lucky. House full of evacuees, many speaking English. Was given food and wine. Found an escaped British soldier who had been brought out of Arnhem by the evacuees, wearing civilian clothes. What luck so far.’

  Luck, however, seemed to have deserted Anje van Maanen. Back at the Tafelberg, she and the other Dutch civilians had spent a difficult and anxious last night. They had been informed by their German captors that they would have to leave the next morning. ‘But we don’t know where to go as our house is still in British hands.’ When she woke, ‘I am afraid what this day will bring. A lot of new misery I am sure.’ Outside, there was no let-up in the battle, with the big guns of the Second Army a dozen miles away still belatedly joining in the artillery exchanges with the Germans. ‘The noise is terrible. It has not been as bad as this before. We can’t speak because of it. The Germans take away their patients and the British start to move out theirs too.’ The wounded men, immobile as they were, confined to what passed for beds, seem not to have been told what was happening, perhaps to stop them panicking. They knew something was up by all the disturbance and activity downstairs, and during a lull in the shelling one optimistic Cockney ventured to Reg Curtis that ‘Jerry’s packed up and buggered off.’ But then orderlies came to carry them out, and Curtis was aware that these medics were very quiet and looked distressed. ‘You’re going to the hospital in Arnhem,’ he was told.

  As he was carried out of the makeshift field hospital in the Tafelberg that had sheltered him for six days, he saw the bodies of Airborne and enemy lying where they had fallen. ‘Jeeps and small vans were improvised as makeshift ambulances, anything with wheels that could get us away from this hell hole. Three of us stretcher cases were loaded onto a small open lorry. It was a rough ride along the shell-holed and litter-strewn roads and those of us with shattered bones cried out in pain until we came to a standstill at the St Elizabeth Hospital.’ O
ther wounded had to walk that same route, a tough 2-mile slog for men with injuries, some carrying others on stretchers. One of them considered they must have looked a pitiful sight. ‘We were battered, like the buildings around us. We were scruffy and dirty. Our uniforms were torn. We couldn’t march with our heads high as we had done when we arrived here as liberators. But most of us still wore our red berets and we still felt proud of them. We had proved to the enemy that we weren’t to be trifled with.’

  The Dutch were about to be sent on their way too, Anje recalled, thrust out into the middle of what was still a battlefield. ‘We are told we must leave, and a message is sent to the German headquarters to stop the firing, but it doesn’t. Outside, just 20 yards from the Tafelberg is a German artillery officer with orders to blow the whole place up. He tells us the shelling is not going to stop and we must take a route through the garden and down the back streets. I don’t know how we’re expected to drive a car through a garden with seriously wounded people. But there is no other solution. A shell wrecks the kitchen. Fortunately, no one is hurt. Finn appears from under the table, grey with dust and wagging his tail. That dog is amazing!’ The Dutch sat in the cellar while negotiations went on for their safe passage. ‘There are more loud crashes and everything shakes and trembles. A man we know comes rushing down and tells us his sister, Corry, a nurse, has been killed. Oh no, it can’t be possible. Just a little while ago she was sitting with me in the kitchen. When the latest attack came, five people were hit, three of them dead and two wounded. Corry immediately went to the wounded boys. And when the second attack came a shell splinter hit her. It is too awful for words. I hate God. We sit in the cellar feeling utterly miserable. I feel as if I have aged ten years since last Sunday.’