One of the many ironies of Operation Market Garden was that the German retreat to Elden in the early hours of 25 September coincided with the British decision to withdraw the 1st Airborne Division. Kampfgruppe Knaust had suffered such heavy losses in the battle against the 129th Brigade and the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards that Bittrich ordered it to pull all the way back from Elst to either side of Elden. This was less than two kilometres from the southern end of the Arnhem road bridge which the 1st Airborne had failed to secure. By coincidence the 129th Brigade was about to be replaced by another from the 50th Northumbrian Division, so the Germans were not pursued during their withdrawal. Bittrich reported that ‘the enemy followed only cautiously’.
General Urquhart, having received Thomas’s letter with details of Operation Berlin shortly before dawn, came to a decision within two hours. The division could not survive in its present state of exhaustion, lack of ammunition and supplies. The Germans were trying to cut them off from the riverbank and then they would be trapped. He ordered his radio operator to call up the 43rd Division headquarters. The decision went back up the chain of command for final confirmation. ‘Spoke to Horrocks on the blower using arranged code,’ General Dempsey wrote in his diary. ‘Two alternatives were “Little One” for withdrawal; “Big One” for further crossing.’
‘I think it must be the Little One,’ said Horrocks.
‘I was going to tell you it would have to be the Little One anyway,’ he replied. Dempsey then informed Field Marshal Montgomery that the withdrawal would be carried out that night, and he assented. He had little choice.
Montgomery’s official biographer remarked of this moment that ‘Monty’s bid for the Ruhr via Arnhem had proved nothing less than foolhardy.’ Staff officers at his tactical headquarters had never seen ‘the Master’ look so quiet and withdrawn. The sacrifice of the 1st Airborne Division was grave enough. Market Garden had also used up the striking power of the Second Army and led it into the blind alley of the Betuwe, where it could do nothing. Even Montgomery’s great supporter Field Marshal Brooke concluded that his strategy had been at fault. ‘Instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place,’ he wrote in his diary. The failure to secure the Scheldt estuary leading to that vital port now stood out as a glaring lapse of judgement.
After Model’s prediction to Führer headquarters that they would crush the Kessel, or cauldron, as they called the besieged area of Oosterbeek, the Germans had to make a big push that day. The volume of fire reached unprecedented levels, with mortars, artillery, assault-gun and tank fire. Kampfgruppe Spindler now had its company of fifteen Royal Tigers from Heavy Panzer Abteilung 506. The American fighter control officer Lieutenant Bruce Davis ‘counted 133 shells around the hotel [Hartenstein] between 07.20 and 08.05’. A Nebelwerfer firing its ‘screaming meenie’ rockets was having the greatest effect on the defenders’ nerves. But to their surprise and joy RAF fighter-bombers appeared for the second day running and a Typhoon obliterated the Nebelwerfer with rockets.
At 07.50, Bittrich’s headquarters reported to Army Group B, ‘Enemy in besieged area of Oosterbeek still maintaining a bitter defence. Each house has been turned into a fortress.’ At 09.00, Urquhart informed Colonel Warrack of the decision to pull back across the Neder Rijn. It would be impossible to take the wounded, so the medical services would stay behind to help them in captivity. Warrack accepted this without a murmur: it was the role required of the medical corps. He went to the command post of the Light Regiment to make sure that the XXX Corps artillery to the south knew the exact positions of all the dressing stations and aid posts. Only one shell from the 64th Medium Regiment was thought to have hit a medical centre.
Across the river, the Polish headquarters and aid station at Driel were also under heavy fire. ‘On the first day of the battle,’ Lieutenant Władysław Stasiak wrote, ‘the doctors had looked no different from any other doctors working in regular hospitals. Now they had replaced their white caps with paratrooper helmets. Under their white gowns they wore protective armoured vests.’ At least their casualty clearing station did not have too many examples of combat fatigue to deal with. Only two Polish paratroopers had suffered ‘complete nervous breakdown’, and another committed suicide in his slit trench.
At 10.30 the Germans attacked south of the Hartenstein from round the Tafelberg, which they had captured the day before. ‘Found a hundred Germans in woods between Hartenstein and river,’ Bruce Davis reported. ‘Afraid Germans had wind of plan, so radioed 43rd Division artillery to hit them in the surrounding woods, especially on the southern side between Hartenstein and the riverbank.’ It was Colonel Loder-Symonds who was in radio contact with 64th Medium Regiment. ‘We fired mediums within 100 yards of our own troops, which was very tricky,’ he said later. In fact they were firing more or less into the centre of the perimeter itself. Major Blackwood and his remnants of the 11th Parachute Battalion were rather too close for comfort. ‘Our gunners called down a barrage of Second Army mediums to crush a threatened counter-attack. Some of the guns were firing short and we got the full benefit. The whole earth quaked with the explosions, so did we.’ The rain was pouring down as well as the shells that morning. ‘We snitched an umbrella from a ruined house and set it up,’ Blackwood noted. ‘Unmilitary but useful.’
At midday, Colonel Warrack was back at the Hotel Schoonoord. The wounded were evacuated by thirty German ambulances, Jeeps and even handcarts while the firing continued. The Schoonoord was then refilled with wounded from other sites, which were overcrowded. Skalka had insisted on starting with the Schoonoord alone, even though there were many badly wounded in the Tafelberg. Warrack, to conceal the gravely weakened state of the division, had told him at their first meeting that there were only 600 patients, but the true figure was more than three times larger.
The Germans were taking the British wounded to a barracks in Apeldoorn, the Willem III-Kazerne, which was being converted into a makeshift hospital by captured British doctors and orderlies. Hendrika van der Vlist decided that she should go with them to help. She found herself having to deal with some Dutch SS. ‘I felt ashamed for my compatriots in front of the English, but I have to try to get on with them.’ She could do little when the Dutch SS discovered that the British wounded had Dutch currency, with Queen Wilhelmina’s portrait, which was banned in German-occupied territory. The SS started to frisk each man and take the money. The British began to object strongly. ‘Explain to them, Sister. We are not taking real money from them,’ the SS men said. ‘This is just junk.’
The arrival of Polish reinforcements meant that they could take over some positions where only a handful of British remained unwounded. Mevrouw Kremer-Kingma found the Poles very different when they assumed the defence of her house. After their officer had been killed, the Pole who took command pointed to the entrance. ‘When the Germans enter this house,’ he declared, ‘we will defend ourselves to the end in the cellar.’
‘What about us?’ the Dutch civilians asked in horror. The Poles thought it over and agreed not to fight in the cellar. They would leave that to the family. In another house defended by Poles, the parents were crying over their little boy who had lost most of one buttock ripped off by shrapnel. Officer Cadet Adam Niebieszczański gave him his last square of chocolate, and the brave little boy managed to smile his thanks as he put it in his mouth.
Captain Zwolański, the liaison officer at the Hartenstein who had swum the Neder Rijn in both directions, was now suffering from dehydration. ‘We haven’t had water to drink for two days,’ he wrote. ‘The small quantities we still have, are for the wounded only.’ He decided to make a run for the nearest well as soon as the artillery barrage died down. Two British soldiers agreed to go with him, but knowing that a sniper covered the door, they were well aware that they all had to charge out together. Any pause between them would give him time to aim. ‘We bound from tree to tree, drop into ditches, and finally get to a cluster of bushes by the well. The two Englishmen, hidden behind a small mound of earth, crawl up closer to the well. As soon as they’ve pulled up the bucket and put it down, one of them takes a look and is lightly wounded in the hand. We still fill up our canteens with water. We retrace our steps quickly to get to the ruins of the headquarters before another artillery barrage begins.’
Smoking saved one man’s life. During one of the more intense bombardments, a British lieutenant from a slit trench next to Lieutenant Smaczny ran over to ask for a cigarette. As the barrage intensified, the lieutenant could not go back and decided to smoke the cigarette in Smaczny’s company. Several seconds later a mortar shell hit the very centre of the British lieutenant’s slit trench a couple of metres away, blowing it to pieces.
Early in the afternoon, the main German attack came in on the eastern flank round Oosterbeek church in an attempt to cut the British off from the river. Lonsdale Force and a glider pilot group found themselves in the thick of it. SS panzergrenadiers supported by pioneers with flamethrowers, assault guns and several Royal Tigers threatened the Light Regiment’s howitzers. Some of the gunners were firing over open sights at ranges of less than fifty metres, and one battery was overrun. The last remaining anti-tank guns were brought into position. ‘There are few more terrifying noises than the whine and rattle of an approaching tank,’ wrote Major Blackwood with Lonsdale Force that afternoon. But they held their ground. ‘Something grimly humorous’, he added, ‘in seeing a frantically scurrying Hun legging it in vain with bullets kicking up the mud at his heels.’
Major Cain of the South Staffords, who felt comparatively spruce after seizing an unexpected opportunity for a shave, once again demonstrated extraordinary courage. Now out of PIAT ammunition, he grabbed a 2-inch mortar and went into action. ‘By skilful use of this weapon and his daring leadership of the few men still under his command,’ the citation for his Victoria Cross continued, ‘he completely demoralised the enemy who, after an engagement lasting more than three hours, withdrew in disorder.’
Urquhart had told his officers not to announce the withdrawal until early evening, just in case anyone was taken prisoner. At Dennenoord on the western flank the previous night, the former governor-general Jonkheer Bonifacius de Jonge had thought that they were about to be saved. He had been convinced that the Allied artillery firing from the south was supporting a major crossing of the river. The anti-climax was considerable. ‘So many wounded came in during the afternoon that we could not cope any more. The men were lying on top of each other it was so full, and cooking wasn’t possible. The major said that during the coming night they would pull back across the river to Driel with all who were still able to move. So the whole plan is a total failure. All these victims, all this suffering, all this for nothing!’
Major Powell was also dismayed when he heard at the Hartenstein that they were to withdraw that night. He had thought that the arrival of the Dorsets meant that the Second Army would be across the river at any moment. He felt sickened when thinking of all that wasted effort and so many lives lost. Major Blackwood, on the other hand, had no illusions when he heard of the evacuation that night. ‘It was a bitter moment, but with food and ammo exhausted, anti-tank guns all knocked out and men dazed with nine days of shelling and mortars, there is no alternative.’
Once the decision to leave had been taken, Major General Urquhart had called in Charles Mackenzie, Eddie Myers and other members of his staff. He explained that, having studied the evacuation of Allied forces at Gallipoli as a young officer, he planned to follow a similar plan. In the course of the night the bulk of the division would be pulled back to the riverbank, following white tapes in the dark provided by the engineers. A rearguard would stay in place on the flanks until almost the very end to prevent the Germans from realizing what was afoot. While Urquhart based his plans on Gallipoli, Brigadier Hicks muttered about ‘another Dunkirk’. He was not alone.
At 17.30 details of the evacuation plan were distributed to all officers. The old British army rule of ‘last in, last out’ unfortunately meant that the Poles would form the main rearguard. A British major relayed the order to the commander of the 8th Company, Lieutenant Smaczny: ‘The 8th Company is to stay in its positions and cover the evacuation. The company will be relieved at the right time. The order to leave positions will be delivered by a runner.’ Smaczny suspected that the order would become a death sentence for him and his company.
For Polish paratroopers this was a particularly bitter moment. They had not been in Warsaw fighting alongside their compatriots. And with the Red Army at the gates of their capital, they had no idea whether they would ever be allowed home. Their dead in Oosterbeek were buried where they had fallen – usually in shell craters, trenches or foxholes. On their graves, their companions placed a helmet and erected a simple cross made of tree branches, marked with a dog-tag or sign bearing the rank, name, nationality and date of death. Having completed the burial, soldiers said a short prayer. ‘Their eyes welled up with tears – tears of grief for the loss of the fallen, tears of grief for a failed hope.’
Even though the prospect of leaving the hell of Oosterbeek was a relief, the idea of crossing the river again under fire did not appeal to them. They felt they had been lucky to have got through the first time. ‘To expect such a miracle to happen again is clearly an abuse of divine patience.’ Orders came that they were to leave everything except their weapons. ‘Haversacks are lined up neatly so the Germans cannot say that the Poles have fled in panic.’
The three journalists with the 1st Airborne, Stanley Maxted and Guy Byam of the BBC and Allan Wood of the Daily Express, were told that they could take a haversack each. Byam in his report recorded that ‘Many were so tired that when they smiled, they smiled as if it hurt them to move their mouths.’ Steel-studded army boots had to be wrapped in strips of blanket for silence. As the rain poured down, all welcomed it as it would help screen them from the enemy. ‘We were never happier to see rain,’ wrote Brigadier Hicks. Many took the opportunity to use their capes to catch the water to drink.
The Phantom signals detachment with divisional headquarters smashed their radio set and destroyed their one-time code-pads in a stove in the Hartenstein kitchen. Lieutenant Bruce Davis helped burn documents and used the ash to blacken his face. He then went out and sat in a slit trench to accustom his eyes to the dark. He took a last look at the surroundings. ‘I have never seen such a scene of destruction.’ The great beech trees around the Hartenstein had been smashed and shredded by mortar fire. ‘The smell of gunpowder was still everywhere. The big four story house was a shambles. Part of the roof was blown in. There was no window left in the place – there hadn’t been for days – the walls were blown in in several places and the dead were everywhere. We had not been able to bury the dead from the first.’
A gunner could not help noticing, as they left their wrecked house near the church at Oosterbeek, that the wooden-framed sampler saying ‘Home Sweet Home’ in English was still in place on the wall, after virtually everything else had been destroyed. ‘When the order to pull out came,’ a pathfinder sergeant recounted, ‘I had a terrible fear for the Dutch in the cellars, especially the youngsters. We had weapons. They had nothing. We were leaving. They were staying.’
Headquarters personnel were divided into groups of ten and told that nobody was to open fire unless ordered by their leader. Just as they were about to set off, General Urquhart filled a cup with whisky and passed it round, as if in a farewell communion, and then the glider pilot chaplain led them in the Lord’s Prayer.
Troops from the 43rd Division mounted a feint attack from the village of Heteren, four kilometres west of Driel, firing machine guns and mortars across the river to give the impression of an assault crossing there. Then, at 21.00, XXX Corps artillery opened a covering barrage, hitting targets all around the edge of the perimeter. ‘The Second Army guns started in real earnest,’ a pathfinder wrote. ‘I’ve never heard such a noise, it beat anything Jerry has put over.’ The Germans were convinced, as was the intention, that the weight of artillery must be supporting a crossing in strength: that the British were reinforcing the airborne division, not withdrawing it.
For civilians still in Oosterbeek, the bombardment was terrifying. People in cellars lay curled up underneath their mattresses. ‘At the back of our house,’ an anonymous diarist wrote, ‘a great round hole appeared after a shell exploded. Windows and doors were splintered. Huge holes appeared in the ceiling. Cupboard doors were like a colander from the shrapnel; lamp shades, chair covers, everything was destroyed. Over the fireplace a portrait of [Queen] Juliana and [Prince] Bernhard with their children, looked at me as if this was a daily occurrence.’
Heavy rain and darkness made visibility so bad that some groups of paratroopers took three hours to reach the riverbank. Even the white tapes set up by the sappers were hard to see. Men were told to hold on to the bayonet scabbard or shirt-tail of the man in front to avoid becoming lost. When someone halted, everyone behind would bump into the back of the man in front. With their muffled boots and the urge for silence, they could hear the patter of rain on the leaves and, at odd moments close to the perimeter, German soldiers chatting in low voices. At every change of direction along the route stood a glider pilot sergeant to make sure everyone followed the right way. ‘Every now and then a flare would go up on the flanks,’ wrote Major Blackwood, ‘and then long files of freezing exhausted men would be struck into immobility till the brilliant light died.’
Other units, including Poles, passed the Smaczny company’s position and expressed surprise that they had not left. They had to explain the 8th Company’s orders to form the rearguard. The Germans began to fire mortars, which they normally never did at night. Many feared that this signified that they had discovered what was afoot. Since almost everyone was in the open by then and not in slit trenches, casualties were inevitable. A private in the Border Regiment never forgot one of the victims. ‘We passed along the road and there was a wounded fellow, and he was crying for his mother and everyone felt really sorry, but no one was in a position to help him.’
As Colonel Payton-Reid led the remnants of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers down to the Neder Rijn, they passed the Hartenstein ‘which now loomed ghostly and lifeless through the darkness’. Departing through such scenes of death put everyone in a sombre mood. More died on the way to the riverbank. Lieutenant Bruce Davis wrote in his report, ‘We walked along a road and behind hedges until we reached an open field commanded by a German machine-gun. As we crawled, a very bright light went up, but they apparently did not see us. We moved on into woods again. We stopped to rest and as we squatted down, the man behind me pitched forward on his face. I thought he had seen something and hit the dirt. Then I rolled him over and saw that he was dead. He was the fourteenth man to be killed within a few feet of me, the others by mortar fire.’
On approaching the dyke in front of the riverbank, Myers’s Royal Engineers made each group lie down to wait until beckoned forward. ‘We settled down on the grass to wait our turn on the boats,’ the pathfinder continued. ‘By now it was raining fairly heavily, and the clouds were low, which I think was the only thing which kept us from being seen. Jerry was sending up lots of flares and occasional bursts of mortar fire on the banks of the river.’ Others lay down flat in the mud. As Byam described it, ‘Long lines of men hugged the ground so as to stand the best chance of not being hit by enemy mortar shells.’
Operation Berlin, although rapidly put together, was a greatly improved example of organization and execution. Lieutenant Colonel Mark Henniker, the Commander Royal Engineers of the 43rd Division, had the 20th and 23rd Canadian Field Companies in addition to his own men. The Canadians had twenty-one flat-bottomed wooden storm boats with Evinrude outboard motors while the British sappers had canvas assault boats. When the Canadian officers were summoned to a briefing that morning, Henniker had still been given no idea of the number of men to be brought off and it was not even certain where the embarkation point was to be. The ‘orders were that we should continue until the beach was cleared’. They then found that they needed bridging equipment for crossing dykes and ditches.
Having surmounted all these problems, the first boat was launched at 21.20 but it had a major leak from a rip. The next boat set off, but was sunk by a direct hit from a mortar shell. Its crew was never seen again. The third boat was far more successful. Its crew would complete fifteen trips before they were relieved. The first boats reached the north bank at 21.40, and groups ran crouching down the bank and into the water to climb aboard. The rippling surface of the river was still lit by the flames from the blazing timber-yard. To their left and right, Bofors guns fired tracer at regular intervals marking the outside edges of the perimeter and the bank towards which the boats should steer. It was not easy with the strong current, and the heavy rain caused endless trouble to the outboard motors. They stalled frequently, which meant that boats were swept down river, and then had to fight their way back.
German machine guns firing attempted to sweep the river, but since they were sited on higher ground they did not have nearly the same effect as they would have done if firing on a horizontal plane. The voices of the Canadian sappers were found to be cheerful and encouraging, and they did much to soothe the fears of their passengers. Because of the rain one Canadian could not start the outboard motor. He told the last two soldiers to arrive to start paddling with their rifle butts. Seeing a soldier in front of him who was apparently uninjured, one of them asked why he was not helping. The man turned and said quite calmly, ‘I’ve lost an arm.’
Many boats were hit by either mortar or machine-gun fire, so Corporal Korob and a fellow Polish paratrooper decided to swim. The two men found a large log and then, holding on for dear life, kicked away. Many others also set out to cross the Neder Rijn on their own. Most of those attempting to keep their personal weapon with them drowned as a result. Lewis Golden, a signals lieutenant, asked if any of his group wanted to join him swimming the river. Only Company Sergeant Major Clift and Golden’s batman, Driver Hibbitt, responded. ‘We stripped off our smocks, blouses, trousers and boots,’ Golden wrote, ‘but I for one kept my beret tightly on my head because it held in position my silver cigarette case which I was intent on saving. We threw our firearms into the river and swam off.’ Hibbitt was not a strong swimmer. The other two tried to save him when he floundered, but lost him as he slipped from their grasp.
Three glider pilots, impatient with the long queues, found a small boat further down the riverbank. In it were the bodies of two young civilians who had been shot. They climbed in without removing the bodies and began to paddle with their rifle butts, but the boat began to sink. The two bodies floated to the surface beside them, and the three men abandoned ship rapidly. They swam back to the shore, where they joined a queue for the Canadian boats. Another group was more fortunate. They found an abandoned assault boat, which had been badly holed by machine-gun fire. After rounding up a couple of other officers and several men they set out. One group paddled hard, using their rifle butts, while the rest bailed as fast as they could, using their helmets. Every few minutes they swapped roles, until they reached the far shore completely exhausted.
Some men acted as helpers, standing in the water to load the walking wounded into the boats. When the boat left, they floated in the water holding on to its side and allowing themselves to be dragged across. But if the boat came under fire, they could let go and swim the rest of the way.
As the night drew on, hundreds of men still waiting to be evacuated became increasingly nervous. ‘As dawn broke grey,’ the 23rd Canadian Field Company reported, ‘the trouble began. Each trip became more hazardous. Little fountains marked where the mortar bombs had struck the water, debris of boats and struggling men marked the hits.’ The sapper boat crews did not falter, and kept going. But ‘it was impossible to regulate the number of passengers carried in boats at times. Men panicked and stormed onto the boats, in some cases capsizing them. In many cases they had to be beaten off or threatened with shooting to avoid having the boats swamped . . . They were so afraid that daylight would force us to cease our ferrying before they were rescued.’
Sosabowski heard from his men how an officer shouted furiously at a mass of British troops fighting to get on a boat, ‘Get back! Behave like Englishmen!’ But Lance Corporal Harris from the 1st Parachute Battalion also witnessed a group of Poles rush a boat. ‘They did not fancy being taken prisoner by the Germans, no doubt because of what happened in their own country to prisoners-of-war.’ Harris himself threw his rifle in the river and stripped off his boots and battledress. Having placed his pay-book and lighter in his beret and jammed it on his head, he set off in just his underwear. Weak after so little food and rest, he feared that the strong current would carry him away, but he just managed to reach the other side.
Colonel Henniker ordered operations to cease at 05.45, ‘when it became evident that any further attempts to bring off men would be suicidal for the boat crews’. But Lieutenant Russell Kennedy of the 23rd Canadian Field Company, carried on even after dawn. The artillery tried firing smoke shells, but in the damp conditions they achieved little. On his penultimate crossing, Kennedy took captured German lifebelts in case any straggler wanted to swim. ‘He made two trips with these, leaving about a hundred for those who cared to use them. Each trip he brought back a boatload of men. In the first trip he had about five casualties. In the second hardly a man got out unhit, many were dead. It was a gallant effort, but he could not be allowed to try again.’
The rearguard, Smaczny’s 8th Company and another group under Lieutenant Pudełko, had both waited all night for a runner to bring them the order to abandon positions as they had been promised. They waited in vain, not knowing whether the messenger had been killed or had lost his way in the dark, or perhaps the officer responsible had simply forgotten. Just before dawn, when there could be no doubt that his company had fulfilled its duty, Smaczny ordered his men to pull back. Pudełko did the same, but when both groups reached the river they found they were too late. There were hardly any boats to be seen, just many wounded lying on the mud flats. Pudełko was killed in the water. Most of the others were captured when the Germans moved in. Father Hubert Misiuda, the chaplain of the 3rd Battalion, had been carrying wounded to the boats, and he refused to abandon those left behind. ‘Over the past three days, the chaplain had moved about the battle field, blessing, hearing confessions, dressing wounds, recording deaths, collecting dog-tags. Throughout those days and nights, when he himself was on the verge of a mental breakdown, he encouraged those who were losing spirit.’ Misiuda was shot in the water as he helped others on to one of the last boats.
At 06.00, one of the Poles recorded, ‘the last boat left keeps coming back. German rockets shine so brightly that they clearly illuminate not only us standing on the river bank, but also those on the other side, as they crawl to get over the dyke which now offers the only cover.’ The regimental sergeant major of the Light Regiment, having seen his men away, decided it was time for him to depart. He stripped completely as he had seen three other men drown. When he reached Driel, he found Major J. E. F. Linton there ‘in a lady’s blouse and flannel trousers’. Local villagers and farmers, as soon as they had realized what was happening, had turned out with any spare clothes they had for the swimmers who arrived, shivering uncontrollably. Soldiers who had swum the river naked were embarrassed by their nakedness, but not the women who passed them items of clothing and clogs.
When Major Geoffrey Powell reached the southern shore he turned back to look at where they had come from. ‘I stared at it for a few seconds and then, all at once, I realised I was across. It was a feeling of complete disbelief. I simply could not believe I had got out alive.’ From the river, men followed a white guide tape over a muddy dyke. Although exhausted and shivering, one paratrooper with a fine voice began to sing the song ‘When the Lights Go On Again’. More and more voices joined in until it seemed as if a couple of hundred were singing together.
The Germans, having finally woken up to the fact that the 1st Airborne was escaping, opened fire with some shells aimed at Driel. On the way to the village, Lieutenant Hay stopped to speak to a captain from the 43rd Division. ‘My God!’ he replied. ‘Don’t stand here. It’s dangerous.’ Hay could not help laughing, for it was the safest spot he had been in for more than a week. On reaching Driel, Major Cain was greeted by Brigadier Hicks, who walked over and looked closely at him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here’s one officer at least who’s shaved.’ Cain smiled. ‘I was well brought up, sir.’
In the barn at Driel, the survivors were given a mug of hot tea laced with rum and a blanket to put round their shoulders. Some forty stretcher-equipped Jeeps were waiting for the wounded. The rest still had another long walk in front of them to get to the dressing station, from where trucks would collect them. Many were so tired that they fell asleep as they walked.
According to the First Allied Airborne Army, 1,741 men of 1st Airborne Division, 160 Polish paratroopers, 75 Dorsets and 422 glider pilots were evacuated that night. A few more escaped the following night. ‘We came back 4 officers and 72 men,’ wrote Colonel Payton-Reid, the commanding officer of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. This was almost exactly one-tenth of the battalion strength on the roll call after their landing nine days before.
In one of the groups left on the north bank a British officer, seeing that the situation was hopeless, told the men around him that they had no alternative but to surrender. He waved a white handkerchief, but the Germans opened fire in response, killing him on the spot.
As the Germans moved in on the survivors huddled on the muddy shore, a Polish soldier was appalled when he saw four British paratroopers stand up in a tight circle and link their arms together, then one of them pulled the pin from a grenade which he did not drop. ‘There was an explosion and the four men fell.’ Lieutenant Smaczny had no more than twenty men left in his company as they approached the riverbank. They suddenly heard shouts and bursts of firing in the air. Smaczny and his men found themselves rounded up along with a large group of British paratroopers. He ordered his men to throw down their weapons immediately. Fortunately, the Poles had their grey berets in their pockets, and not on their heads, so they were not immediately identifiable.
The German guards marched this large group of prisoners off together, but after a time they halted. A German SS officer shouted out that all Poles should step forward. Knowing the hatred the Germans, and especially the SS, felt for the Poles, a British officer passed Smaczny his red beret and shouted out in bad German: ‘There are no Poles here.’ Smaczny and his men feared that they would be ordered to take off their parachute smocks, which would reveal the Polish white-eagle patches on their uniforms underneath, but at that moment XXX Corps artillery fired another bombardment from south of the river, and their guards hurried them on.
A number of the prisoners rounded up on the north bank wondered afterwards whether they should have risked swimming across alone. It is hard to tell how many drowned that night. According to an account from Rhenen, twenty-five kilometres downstream, ‘Dead English soldiers drifted down the Neder Rijn. The boys hauled them out of the water with boathooks, and pulled them on to the bank, where they were collected by the Red Cross to be buried in civilian cemeteries. It became a routine.’