“There was a sudden, terrible noise,” said Audrey. “Everything seemed to become a burning mass.”
Despite the German ultimatum, the morning of 17 September had progressed like any other Sunday with the mostly Calvinist churches of Gelderland filled. But nothing would be usual in just a little while. This account by Greta Stephany from Wolfheze, the next village over from Oosterbeek, typified what Dutch civilians around Arnhem experienced this particular morning. “That Sunday we were in church,” said Greta. “We started hearing noises above us, like planes shooting at each other, and flying low. We knew that meant we had to find shelter, but the minister kept preaching as usual. People became restless and there was lots of whispering. Then, all of a sudden, we heard bombs falling. Everybody got up and started running outside, to our homes and safety….”
Low-level Allied air attacks were taking place all over the area, from Wolfheze to Velp and beyond, causing people to spill out of churches to find cover. Near some houses of worship, the ground rattled and people toppled off their feet. The concussion accompanying the explosions wrenched breath from bodies and blew in precious stained glass.
Twin-engine B-26 Marauder and Mosquito bombers had come calling to hit German barracks, air defense cannons, and ammunition stores. The big Wehrmacht barracks across the street from Arnhem Centraal Station went up in a mushroom cloud. The Wehrmacht building and ammo dump in Wolfheze shot sky high.
Anti-aircraft batteries all about, in Arnhem, up by Deelen, in Wolfheze, and in Westervoort, answered the attack, only to come under fire themselves from British fighter planes guarding the bombers. The Nazi defense cannons in all the local Dutch towns sent shells continuously skyward. Every second the thump-thump-thump of the cannons could be heard, with flak bursts plainly visible above Velp as German shells exploded in the western sky. The Arnhem tableau as seen from Hoofdstraat looking west seemed like angry bees swarming around a picnic as the Marauders and Typhoons swooped and dove and climbed and circled, and British Mosquito fighter-bombers joined the attack in formations of six. Dozens of fast-moving dots filled the sky. Smoke rose from several places to the west, and heaven help the poor Arnhemsche civilians caught in so many deadly transactions. Audrey could only try to plot the location of the Dansschool in relation to the black smoke and fret over the safety of her ballet friends and their families and especially Mistress Marova in what had suddenly become the devil’s own inferno. The sight of the columns of smoke billowing up from Arnhem in this moment simply terrified her.
The action over Arnhem continued from late morning into early afternoon. The poor place took such a pounding, and the air smelled of sulfur and burning wood.
Just when it seemed Audrey’s village would be spared, the Velpsche air-raid siren sounded. The van Heemstras sought shelter in the small cellar under the kitchen in the rear of the villa. Down the baron shepherded his daughters and granddaughter. Audrey’s ears were filled with the sounds of the alarm and then with the roar of Allied planes buzzing above the treetops of town.
Very close by, the Velp anti-aircraft battery opened up and cannons boomed every second. Then came the suspended moment when they knew the eye of the storm had found them, with the planes directly overhead and ready to drop their bombs. The air-raid siren had fallen silent and no one so much as breathed. All that could be heard now were aircraft motors and the occasional purring of German-made Spandau machine guns pointed skyward. Did the men in the planes know about the radio station upstairs? Would they go after that? There! There! The whistle of falling bombs! The four van Heemstras could but cover heads with arms and pray. Onze Vader die in de hemel zijt …
Explosions began to sound close by—much closer than Arnhem. The Beukenhof’s walls and floor joists above their heads shook. The Allied planes must be going after the cannons down below Willemstraat. That was just a little ways off, across the railroad tracks in South Velp. More and more death rained down. How long did the attack continue? It seemed like hours but was only minutes, and then all grew quiet again. The van Heemstras allowed themselves a breath, but in their minds they wondered how many innocent Dutch didn’t have any breath left at all. What would they find outside? In a village like Velp, everyone knew everyone and every structure was dear.
The air-raid siren sounded all clear and the four of them trooped upstairs and outside, where the clanging bells of the fire brigade testified that Velp had new troubles. All along the street, neighbors could be seen creeping out of the shadows in a day that had begun with worship until the air had been fouled by the arrival of war. Warily, homeowners inspected rooflines for damage and walls for bullet holes, while the German soldiers occupying the town had a very different reaction and could be seen running in all directions. German officers barked commands randomly, and on Hoofdstraat army vehicles sped along in both directions as if not knowing which way was best but understanding that a moving vehicle was harder to hit. Some of these machines careened by the Beukenhof and sped north in the direction of Rozendaal.
Sure enough, down toward the main thoroughfare past the activity of the Germans, black smoke billowed up with fury over the rooftops of the business district and into the hazy blue afternoon. It was unspeakable, unthinkable—innocent Velpenaren losing their homes and their lives just for being in the wrong place at the wrong moment, because they had been unlucky enough to see the Germans wheel an anti-aircraft battery into their neighborhood.
The van Heemstras’ first impulse was to help, whether that meant fighting the fire or bandaging survivors or heading to the Ziekenhuis to offer aid there. By the time they reached Hoofdstraat, word had spread that a number of Dutch had indeed been killed down past Willemstraat, with many more wounded and several houses destroyed. But before the baron or Ella could decide what should be done in the way of helping victims, a new, deep, and foreboding sound could be heard off to the west. More planes were coming. Many, many more. The four van Heemstras turned to head for home, but shouts and pointing made them stop. Many in the neighborhood climbed onto their roofs to see over the tree line. Off to the west amid the rising columns of dirty brown and black smoke from Arnhem and the villages beyond, those in the streets beheld a breathtaking sight. Orderly formations of dots had appeared on the horizon, planes flying in rank and file and not terribly high. Then, oh! Something new—something spilling out of the planes filling the midday blue.
Fourteen-year-old Dick Mantel, Audrey’s neighbor across the street, stood on his roof to get a view of what was going on in the western sky.
“Parachutes!” someone called with excitement. Parachutes? It took a moment and the people of Velp realized all of a sudden: Invasion! Allied invasion! Shouts of joy filled the air as, at long last, liberation was at hand. Their saviors would not be plodding along on the ground from the Belgian border to the south; they would drop from the heavens by act of God. Of course—deliverance on a Sunday!
Planes, planes, and more planes appeared on the horizon, some of them banking grandly as if part of an aerial ballet and easing into a landing somewhere west of Arnhem and Oosterbeek. So many parachutes! Hundreds, thousands maybe. Surely it would be enough to drive out the “rot moffen”—those hated Germans. Everyone wept from a wellspring of tears, years of them.
In Oosterbeek Kate ter Horst lived near the Old Church—a thousand years old—and watched the spectacle up close. “We can see the large bombers approaching from the west in marvelous formations,” she wrote in her diary. “They seem to be towing something behind them; planes but without landing wheels, flat underneath and very long. Oh! They’re coming down. Do you see that?”
Soon thousands of paratroopers of the British 1st Airborne spilled out of the gliders and unhooked from their parachutes. Green-clad Tommies in steel-pot helmets or red berets, each carrying everything they would need for a mission of short duration, began forming up into their units in the farm fields and then hurrying east looking for the roads to Oosterbeek. Just as British scouts had predicted, there wasn’t much German activity near the landing zones, so maybe this would be a cakewalk after all.
A few miles away, the German command reacted to the invasion with veteran calm, although nobody quite knew why the Allies had chosen Arnhem for an attack. There had been no intelligence this might happen. Seyss-Inquart and Rauter imagined they might be the targets, so both packed up and headed east toward the German border. The Dutch SS commanders at the Hotel Naeff, located a few blocks from Audrey and the Beukenhof, knew they possessed years of top-secret documents recording actions that in no way aligned with the 1929 Geneva Conventions. As soon as parachutes filled the air off to the west, they decided there wasn’t time to move their records out of harm’s way. They doused everything with petrol and set the venerable hotel ablaze, loaded into staff cars, and evacuated.
Even a battle-tough Wehrmacht man like Field Marshal Model at the Tafelberg watched with mouth agape at the enormity of the parachute drop. He knew he was dealing with at least a division’s strength of enemy troops and got on the phone at once. His calls to German units in the area and then a series of visits in his staff car set in motion a critical response. Then, he packed up his headquarters and headed out of Oosterbeek.
Just east in Velp, the air-raid siren sounded again, yanking the Rozendaalselaan neighbors back into the moment. It was past time for the van Heemstras to retreat once more to the cellar as Allied fighter planes could be heard again roaming over the treetops, and German cannons thudded and now frantic bursts of machine-gun fire joined the chorus. No one among the civilians could make sense of where the liberators were or where a battle might take place. All they could do was sit underground and wait.
By now the British paratroopers had started the journey toward Arnhem and made good progress eastward into Oosterbeek. They’d been able to bring some light jeeps on the gliders to carry machine guns, ammunition, and other equipment. Cheering Dutch citizens saw them coming and lined the streets as if viewing a parade, some waving Dutch flags grabbed from hiding, others sporting the Oranje armbands of the Dutch Resistance.
A young local girl remarked to herself that “a lot of the soldiers seemed small, with their squat helmets and laden with equipment. It is a memory I shall never forget, all those men….”
Capt. Tony Frank of Frost’s battalion was impressed by “the incredible number of orange flowers or handkerchiefs that suddenly appeared like magic. The Dutch were very much in family groups, in staid clothing, out on this fine Sunday afternoon.”
September blooms were presented to Lt. Col. John Frost, commanding officer of the British 2nd Parachute Battalion. Bread and fruit were offered to his 500 men as they passed single file—wine, champagne, and everything else the ecstatic Dutch could find, especially flowers since the marigolds were in bloom.
Frost, a relaxed officer except in combat situations when he became a tiger, was a stern-looking man with a moustache surrounded by an oval face. He had already seen a lot of action in this war, enough to make him pass sharp orders now to ignore the adulation and by no means consume any alcohol! Yes the locals meant well, but distractions just now could be lethal.
He hurried his men eastward along the narrow little road designated by his commanding officer for the advance to the bridge. This road with an unpronounceable Dutch name a mile long—Benedendorpsweg, which meant Lower Village Road—snaked along the southern edge of this place called Oosterbeek that was as colorful and tidy as a picture postcard, with lush greenery and stone fences near the road, and old, well-kept houses with steep-sloping tile or thatched roofs. The men were conscious of their equipment, canteens, mess kits, weapons, shovels, and ammunition all clanking with every step, and their hobnail boots clomped like horse’s hooves on the cobblestones of the street.
Frost wasn’t enamored of this plan to drop his men nine miles from the main objective, the Arnhem Road Bridge, because it meant troops scattered all over the place in unfamiliar country, and they would be vulnerable to ambush. But there just wasn’t a place closer to the bridge to bring in all the gliders and equipment. His column moved eastward into the dusk in enemy territory as fast as they dared. Up ahead on the right Frost found a landmark on his map: the ancient Protestant church called, fittingly enough, de Oude Kerk—the Old Church. He knew nothing of the van Heemstras or their patronage of this fine building in the 1930s. Frost cared only for the fact he was on course and making good progress toward Arnhem.
Two of Oosterbeek’s leading citizens, Jan ter Horst and his wife, Kate, learned of the approach of Englishmen: “We rush out of the garden on to the road,” said Kate. “Yes, there is the impossible, incredible truth. Our unknown British liberators, like a long green serpent, are approaching one by one, a couple of yards between each of them; the first gives us a jolly laugh from under his helmet….”
A short while later, Frost heard machine-gun fire to the north a ways and the explosions of grenades. He knew some of his mates had found the enemy and feared the Germans would soon run into his lonely single-file column. Frost had but one thought now as the sun set in the western sky behind him: He must reach downtown Arnhem and capture the road and railway bridges over the Rhine. He could see them occasionally up ahead, a tantalizing glimpse here and there as the road twisted and turned.
After what seemed like a lifetime of tense footsteps, off to the right Frost saw his first objective: the railroad bridge over the Rhine that he must capture intact. Once he had done this, his men could race over it and his unit would capture both ends of the Arnhem Road Bridge at once before the Germans understood or responded. He knew that if he didn’t take the bridges, the whole grand operation involving 30,000 American and British troops could collapse. He would be answerable at that point, if he happened to live, to Field Marshal Montgomery himself.
More than six miles to the northeast, Audrey, Ella, and Meisje huddled in the cellar with Opa as explosions sounded in the distance. The bulb in the ceiling joists that lit the enclosure flickered, went dark, lighted again, and then died, and they sat in darkness. As planes roared overhead and cannon boomed trying to knock those planes down, bombs began to fall once again, and the van Heemstras could but muse that just this morning they had fretted for the Baron’s life with the clock ticking on the German ultimatum for saboteurs to surrender themselves. With just a couple of hours to spare the Allied planes and paratroopers had arrived to save the day for many Dutch civilians. But such was the grim humor of this war that Dutch lives saved from a firing squad were taken by Allied bombs instead. Most likely the very last thing on the minds of the Germans this evening, as they fought to maintain their hold on Gelderland, was an act of sabotage at a lonely viaduct that had injured no one.
Now, in the dim light of evening, the van Heemstras had no electric service and ate by the glow of candles from supplies grabbed on the way down the steps. In the far distance they could hear the staccato beats of machine-gun fire, punctuated every so often by rifle shots and the heavier boom of an exploding grenade. It all sounded so angry, so deadly. There were shouts from the street, always in German, directing traffic and ordering faster movement. Schnell! Schnell! The desperation of the Germans revealed itself to the cellar dwellers by the speed of the trucks and tanks zooming down toward the Velperweg to join the battle, and those frequent shouts and raised voices and sharp exchanges of conversation.
Such a strange feeling to have Allied soldiers on the same parcel of earth, practically in the neighborhood. They weren’t in planes flying high overhead on daily missions to bomb Germany; they were real foot soldiers close by and paying attention to Arnhem! Ella could but wish that she had received an offer in response to the classified advertisement in The Hague, but time had run out all too fast. And here she and Audrey sat in the one place they couldn’t afford to be. The battle for Arnhem, the battle to free the people of the Netherlands, had begun.