In September 1944, a mighty shock force of battle hardened Allied troops dropped from the skies into enemy-occupied Holland in what was hoped would be the decisive final battle of World War II. Landing miles behind the German lines, their daring mission was to secure bridges across the Rhine so that ground forces could make a rapid dash into Nazi Germany. If all went well, the war could be over by Christmas.But what many trusted would be a simple operation turned into a brutal losing battle. Of 12,000 British airborne soldiers, 1,500 died and 6,000 were taken prisoner. The vital bridge at Arnhem they had come to capture stayed resolutely in German hands.But though this was a bitter military defeat for the Allies, beneath the humiliation was another story — of heroism and self-sacrifice, gallantry and survival, guts and determination unbroken in the face of impossible odds.In the two-thirds of a century that have passed since then, historians have endlessly analysed what went wrong and squabbled over who was to blame. Lost in the process was that other Arnhem story — the triumph of the human spirit, as seen through the dramatic first-hand accounts of those who were there, in the cauldron, fighting for their lives, fighting for their comrades, fighting for their honour, a battle they won hands down.
‘I will not say that Arnhem was a defeat. Such men as they can never be defeated. They fought till they had nothing left to fight with – and then fought on.’
The well-manicured lawn runs down to the Thames near Abingdon. Pleasure boats cruise by and families are out enjoying the sunshine on this glorious midsummer day in tranquil southern England. But the thoughts of 89-year-old Peter Clarke – whose home this is – are of a different river and a different, troubled time. As he remembers faces and places, his eyes mist and he is on the banks of the Lower Rhine in the Netherlands, two thirds of a century ago. He is back among the brave and the bellicose, the wounded and the weary, the dead and the dying, in Arnhem. It was here that in September 1944 a shock force of British troops dropped from the skies into enemy-occupied Holland in what was hoped would be the decisive final battle of the Second World War. It was the most daring of raids behind German lines. If all went well, the war would be over by Christmas.
The strategy was simple enough. In an effort to speed up the defeat of Hitler’s already retreating armies, twelve thousand British and Polish airborne troops flew many miles into Nazi-held Europe and descended from planes and gliders on the Dutch city of Arnhem, close to the German border, to capture and defend its vital bridge over the Rhine. Within forty-eight hours, a fast-moving column of armour from the British Second Army would arrive overland along a corridor it carved through the German lines, sweep over that bridge and on into Germany through what was in effect the open back door. That was the plan. But the mission went wrong, the reinforcements never arrived and the airborne forces were left isolated. What began as an audacious masterstroke to end the war became a desperate struggle for survival itself. Surrounded, outgunned and running out of supplies, these brave men fought for a week and more in Arnhem and in Oosterbeek, a pretty village in wooded countryside nearby.
Every street was a war zone, every stand of trees a fortress. Every inch was contested; casualties were enormous, on both sides. But in this furnace a legend was forged – of bravery and endurance far beyond the simple call of duty. Even the remorseless enemy admired what the Red Devils of the Airborne Division did at Arnhem. ‘You fought well, Tommy,’ many a German soldier told the six and a half thousand who were finally forced to capitulate, long past the point when they could have honourably surrendered and only when they could fight no more.
Here, in the company of the thoughtful and gentle Peter Clarke, a retired solicitor, it is a leap of the imagination to see him as a young staff sergeant fighting for his life and for those of his comrades as they huddled inside their diminishing redoubts. He is uneasy as we gently tap his memories. ‘I remember very little of that time, nothing almost,’ he says at first. But it’s impossible to hold back the past, especially events that were so brutal and so intense, so grand in scale and yet so deeply personal that they can never be erased. There are long pauses in our conversation as if he is reloading the tape, revisiting the horrors and finding himself as affected now as he was sixty-six years ago. ‘Everything melded into one,’ he says. ‘There are no separate days, no separate nights. I don’t remember morning or afternoon or evening.’
