The Day Gone By (55 page)

Paddy lies among the others in the divisional cemetery at Oosterbeek.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery; the misery of that weekend at Nijmegen, anyway. Until the very end we continued to believe - not just to hope, but to feel sure - that we
would
get to the Neder Rijn and reach the division at Oosterbeek. On Thursday evening the Polish Independent Parachute Brigade dropped on the south bank of the Neder Rijn at Driel, more or less opposite the 1st Airborne perimeter, and were joined next day by some of the Household Cavalry from Nijmegen. Only a few of the Poles, however, managed to get across the river in the mere couple of amphibious vehicles (DUKWs) available. The Somerset Light Infantry, the D.C.L.I. (Durhams) and the Worcestershire went forward from Nijmegen. Heavy fighting in the Betuwe - the low-lying area between Nijmegen and Arnhem - went on all Saturday and Sunday. The long and short of it was, however, that the Germans couldn't be entirely driven away and no effective link could be established between 2nd Army at Nijmegen and 1st Airborne in the box.

Throughout all this the ‘seaborne tail' of 250 Company had nothing to do but to wait, uselessly, at Nijmegen. We might as well not have been there. It was on Sunday evening, the 24th, that John Gifford said to me ‘Apparently, if it's no better by tomorrow night they're going to pull the division out, back over the river.'

‘Pull them
out,
sir? You mean, the whole thing's off? We're not going to Arnhem at all?'

‘Looks like it.'

And as everyone knows, that is what happened. Of the 10,000 men who had landed at Arnhem, about 2,160 got back during the Monday-Tuesday night, the 25-26 September. Among them was Jack Cranmer-Byng, with a handful of our lot, including Sergeant McDowell. Jack subsequently got the M.C.

It is interesting to record what was going to happen if they hadn't. Generalfeldmarschall Model wasn't going to send in his soldiers - even with armour - finally to reduce the starving Oosterbeek box. He knew what they could expect. 1st Airborne was going to be destroyed by heavy artillery at long range. Very brave and prudent, I'm sure.

At some time in the early evening of Tuesday, the 26th, I was sent down to the centre of Nijmegen to ask the Divisional Camp Commandant, Major Newton-Dunn (generally known in 1st Airborne as Hoo Flung Dung), about certain arrangements made for 250 Company. I asked him whether, as the survivors had come in during the night, he had happened to see Jack Cranmer-Byng. Hoo Flung replied that he hadn't been able to notice any one particular person more than another. Then he said ‘And if you like I'll show you why.' He guided me a short distance to a huge building - I think it must have been a gymnasium - with a wooden floor and no tables, chairs or any other furniture in it at all. That's all I can recall about it. It was all in twilight, so you couldn't see much anyway. As we approached the open door, Hoo Flung laid a finger to his lips.

Inside, those who had got back from Oosterbeek were lying on the floor, huddled asleep under grey army blankets. The majority had not slept for a week. At Driel, during the previous night, they had been given a light, hot meal (they had been starving for about five days) and then, having got to Nijmegen, been put in the gym. to sleep.

On account of the dim light in the big building, visibility was limited. The grey rows of unconscious, motionless shapes stretched away until they blurred and you couldn't make out the far end.

As well as Paddy, we had lost two other officers killed: Lt. Daniels, the big chap whose blokes C Platoon had succeeded at Edale: and Thompson, who had been subaltern in one of the other para. platoons.

Later, looking at the lists, I learned that people whom I had known well at Horris Hill and Bradfield were also among those killed: Roddy Gow; David Madden. Their names are on the appropriate war memorials.

‘If you did not get
all
the bridges, it was not worth going at all.' This is the well-known comment of Brigadier Shan Hackett, commanding 4th Parachute Brigade at Arnhem. Many efforts were made at the time - by Mr Churchill, by General Montgomery, General Browning and General Urquhart (who had suffered more than almost anyone) - to represent Operation Market Garden as a victory. For the sake of public morale, they had to say something: so they said it was a triumph for the Allies. It was not. Though reflecting nothing but enormous credit on the courage and endurance of the British and American combatants, it was nevertheless a failure. The intention had been to seize the three bridges, to get them securely into the possession of 2nd Army and thus enable the Allies to cross the Rhine. This was not achieved, and it was no good trying to represent what actually happened as ‘ninety-per-cent. success' (General Montgomery). You might as well say that the answer to a sum was ninety-per-cent. correct, or that a woman was ninety-per-cent. pregnant.

1st Airborne Division, that unparalleled formation, the like of which had never been seen, lay shattered literally to fragments. The two parachute brigades (each consisting originally of some 3,000 men) came back from Arnhem about two companies strong in all: 1st Airlanding Brigade numbered well under 1,000. After Arnhem, the 1st Division never went into action again. Not only its numbers but the superb morale with which it had gone to Arnhem had been lowered. The general feeling was that while the operation had been a gamble worth trying, the Division had been let down by the failure of 2nd Army to arrive as planned. The planning, of course, had been too hasty; yet if it had been deferred, German resistance would have been still more strongly built up during the time.

There will always be argument. I personally believe that despite the fog of war, the thing could have been done better. The fundamental fault, at Command level, was over-confidence. After the German debacle in Normandy, everyone supposed that now that the war was so obviously lost, the Wehrmacht would have no real heart for further resistance. If we seized the bridges, they wouldn't put up very much of a fight. But they did.

The time-table for the airborne landings, spread over more than twenty-four hours, was sadly amiss. With the ‘planes we had, all three divisions could have been landed in twelve hours and should have been.

The dropping zones and landing zones for 1st Airborne were ill-chosen. They were too far away from the Arnhem bridge. The Germans had time to get themselves together while our men were doing their best to cover the eight-mile distance.

1st Airborne's wireless sets didn't work properly in that sort of arboriferous country and over those distances, which meant that there was no proper communication between General Urquhart and his brigadiers and other senior officers. Also, there was no communication from Division back to Corps headquarters.

The weather prevented proper air support being given: that was just one of the bits of bad luck.

With all these things in the scale against them, nevertheless the Division succeeded in carrying out their intention. They had been ordered to hold the bridge until Tuesday afternoon, 19 September. In the event Colonel Frost held it for more than twenty-four hours longer than that.

Why didn't the 2nd Army arrive? Right from the start, at the Escaut Canal, German resistance was stronger than expected. It had not been foreseen that Nijmegen Bridge and the Waal crossing would be so difficult, or that the wet polder land beyond would constitute fatal obstruction.

Geoffrey Powell thinks that General Horrocks and XXX Corps were at fault, that they
might
have got to Arnhem on Tuesday afternoon if they had pressed on harder. He was a combatant of 1st Airborne, and himself suffered terribly at Oosterbeek. As I didn't, I won't intrude a personal view: but I'm not disagreeing with Colonel Powell. XXX Corps didn't do what they'd undertaken to do, anyway. That's beyond argument.

What it came down to was that 1st Airborne Division, the nonpareil, had been lost in a gamble open to criticism which, even if it had succeeded, would not (it is now known) have ended the war by Christmas. I have more than once wept for the division: and in
Traveller
I tried, under a cloak of fantasy, to depict something of what they suffered as they fought on, on their lost wicket. Yet like Traveller, 1st Airborne themselves were not defeated.
They
performed what they had set out to do.

250 Company, now having once more on its strength Jack Cranmer-Byng and such N.C.O.s and men as had come back from Oosterbeek, returned down the Corridor and so to the Brussels area again. While we were there I went to see the Flamands. I remember knocking on the locked and bolted door at about eight o'clock in the evening. Chez Flamand was like a fortress. Those were the sort of times we were living in.

‘Qui est là?' called M. Flamand stoutly, behind the door.

‘C'est Lieutenant Adams!'

‘Qui?'

‘C'est le lieutenant anglais des airportées!'

‘Ah! Par exemple!'

It seemed both strange and sad to eat dinner at a table with a cloth and silver: they couldn't have been kinder to me. I struggled as hard as I could to explain that I hadn't been involved in the action, but I don't think they really believed me: they didn't want to, you see.

We were flown back to England and in due course returned to our old location at Lincoln. Here John Gifford told a friend of mine, Peter Allsop, and myself that we were both promoted to Captain.

We still had no reliable news about any of my missing N.C.O.s and men, and one of my first jobs was to write - as best I could - to the next of kin. Thank God all C Platoon's missing eventually turned out to be prisoners.

It transpired that Paddy had no next of kin: no one in the world; or no one known to 250 Company, anyway. So an auction was held of his things. Paddy had a well-known duffel-coat, fawn in colour and fastening at the front with loops of rope. He had often worn it on duty, over his uniform, when strictly speaking he shouldn't have: but John had winked at it. The duffel-coat was part of him, like Mr Churchill and his cigar. I bought it for a memento: I've still got it somewhere.

Suppose the whole Division had gained their objectives in and around Arnhem and held the bridge (living on what?) for a week, would the 2nd Army have come?
Could
they have come, across that flooded land between Nijmegen and the Neder Rijn?

After Arnhem, the attention of S.H.A.E.F. was turned right away from Holland and directed further south. We left the brave Dutch to be famished and tortured by the Nazis right through the winter. The war was to last more than another seven dreary, plodding months, based on Eisenhower's dubious strategy of the Broad Front (clean contrary to everything in Clausewitz). Unless you experienced them, reader, you can't imagine how depressing those months were.

One of Paddy's men was called Charley Lawes. Charley, before the war, had been a professional boxer, and he had become what my mother used to call ‘a bit biffy, dear.' Charley was all right as long as he knew exactly what he had to do. Before they dropped, Paddy gave him a P.I.A.T. (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank) and told him that, come what may, he was not to relinquish it. ‘Got that, Charley?' ‘Yessir, yessir: all right, right, sir.' A P.I.A.T. weighed a great deal more than a rifle. Charley carried that P.I.A.T. from the dropping zone to the Oosterbeek box. He was in the ambush where Paddy was killed and he carried the P.I.A.T. back through the woods. On the night of the evacuation he took it across the Neder Rijn and carried it the eight miles to Nijmegen, where he finally relinquished it. No one had told him to do so before.

In the event I was to serve another fifteen months in Airborne Forces. I can't say I really enjoyed them, or enjoyed being a captain. I missed C Platoon very much - they never re-formed, anyway - and I shared the general feeling of disappointment and reduced spirits. As far as I was concerned, the odds was gone, and there was nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.

Now, at last, there was time and opportunity to send me on a parachuting course at Ringway. Jumping I found frightening - most people do - but I was fortunate in having a first-class stick commander, John Pengelly of the Devons - the Bloody Eleventh. Our despatcher, Jimmy Blyth, was also first-rate. John Pengelly joked and clowned and set us all an example we couldn't not follow. Jumping is really a matter of group morale. You feel you can't let the others down. How people jump alone I've never understood.

The Ringway training people found me out all right. When I got back to Lincoln, John Gifford — who, like Gallio, cared for none of these things — gave me my confidential report to keep. ‘This officer was of a nervous disposition, although he assumed a pose which suggested confidence. He was always bright and cheerful, and kept the spirits of his stick high by being “the life of the party”. Rather nervous but jumped without hesitation.'

The course of eight jumps included a night jump. This is supposed to be in darkness, so that you don't know when you're going to hit the ground. Ours took place in brilliant, full moonlight, with snow lying. As I floated down from eight hundred feet, there was a superb view of the shining, niveous landscape stretching away to disappear into the far distance.

There is an old airborne chestnut about the night jump. The last jump of a certain course happened to be the night jump, and it was very dark. In the darkness, a voice was heard descending, shouting ‘I've got my wings! I've got my wings!' Then there was a bump, followed by silence. One of the instructors said ‘'
E's
got ‘is wings! Bring 'im over 'ere and I'll give 'im ‘is bloody 'alo!'

The completion of our course was delayed by something like three weeks by bad weather, too windy and stormy for jumping. When at last the weather let up, we still had three jumps to go. The authorities wanted our lot out of Ringway: we were gumming up the works, staying there. We did those three jumps in one and the same day. I wonder whether any other course has ever done three jumps in one day? After we dispersed, I lost touch with John Pengelly, as I had lost touch with Roy Emberson. Horses for ever saying good-bye.