their clumsy craft. Many disappeared on sprees in Holland and Belgium that lasted for days.
Bob Peatling of 2 Para was awed by the spectacle of 1st Airborne’s drop: “It was a wonderful sight to see everybody coming down.” At first, after he himself hit the ground amid the cloud of parachutes filling the sky and collapsing on the earth, he heard no firing. The British descended on to fields and open heathland some six miles north-west of Arnhem bridge, with the Rhine between themselves and XXX Corps. Everybody converged on the rendezvous where Colonel John Frost was blowing his hunting horn, and formed files for the advance into Arnhem. When they began to move, they made slow progress: “We kept meeting bits of opposition, and having to stop. It was a long, hot afternoon. But I thought: ‘This is better than England!’ ” Peatling was not the only one dismayed by 2 Para’s sluggish pace. The divisional commander, Major-General Roy Urquhart, expressed his concern in the first hours.
Corporal Harry Trinder’s glider overshot the landing zone and crashed into a pine wood. He found himself trapped behind the cockpit bulkhead in the wreckage, and it was some time before he could be cut free. Before the battle even started, Trinder was out of it with a badly cut eye and a clutch of broken ribs. He was laid among the wounded who were already coming in, including some whose injuries were plainly mortal. Trinder noticed that “those whom the MO thought were completely beyond hope were given a massive injection of morphine, and put on one side to die.” He thought himself lucky.
John Killick dumped his parachute and walked up to divisional headquarters on the Arnhem landing zone, to find a divisional signals officer reciting monotonously and vainly into a handset: “Hello, Sunray, are you receiving me?” This was the first evidence of the shameful, almost comprehensive failure of 1st Airborne Division’s wireless communications, which was to dog every aspect of the battle which followed.* 4 Killick set out to walk alone into Arnhem, in pursuit of Frost’s men. A few yards down the road, he found an abandoned German BMW motorcycle. Commandeering this, he sped eastwards. A mile further on, he saw a string of German army signposts beside a house, and wandered in. This was the Tafelburg Hotel, Field-Marshal Walter Model’s headquarters at Oosterbeek, hastily abandoned by Army Group B as they saw the first paratroopers descending. Not a soul was in sight. Killick switched on a radio set, and idly picked at some meatballs on the dining-room table. After starting his day reading the Sunday papers in England, “I felt in an absurd position, now to be listening to the BBC and eating the Germans’ lunch.”
Sergeant George Schwemmer, a panzergrenadier with 10th SS Panzer at Arnhem, had been drafted to the division as a replacement after its withdrawal from Normandy. Although Schwemmer was thirty-one, he had managed to stay out of the army until 1944, performing labour service. He would have been more than happy to continue his wartime career road-building and helping with the harvest. Now instead, however, he found himself reluctantly commanding a platoon of panzergrenadiers, most of them young replacements. More than a few of of 10th SS Panzer’s soldiers were not eager Nazis, but “odds and sods” like Schwemmer, scraped together from the depots. He himself was billeted in a house on the edge of Arnhem, and ran out when he heard firing. His first glimpse of the attackers was a wrecked glider which had crashed in a field. He saw German soldiers gesturing to each other as they deployed. Dutch civilians were craning out of every house. Schwemmer shouted brusquely to them to get their heads in and close the windows. Then he ran to muster his unit, which was quickly plunged into street fighting for the town.
Field-Marshal Model, who received the surprise of his life when British paratroops began to land within two miles
Bob Peatling of 2 Para was awed by the spectacle of 1st Airborne’s drop: “It was a wonderful sight to see everybody coming down.” At first, after he himself hit the ground amid the cloud of parachutes filling the sky and collapsing on the earth, he heard no firing. The British descended on to fields and open heathland some six miles north-west of Arnhem bridge, with the Rhine between themselves and XXX Corps. Everybody converged on the rendezvous where Colonel John Frost was blowing his hunting horn, and formed files for the advance into Arnhem. When they began to move, they made slow progress: “We kept meeting bits of opposition, and having to stop. It was a long, hot afternoon. But I thought: ‘This is better than England!’ ” Peatling was not the only one dismayed by 2 Para’s sluggish pace. The divisional commander, Major-General Roy Urquhart, expressed his concern in the first hours.
Corporal Harry Trinder’s glider overshot the landing zone and crashed into a pine wood. He found himself trapped behind the cockpit bulkhead in the wreckage, and it was some time before he could be cut free. Before the battle even started, Trinder was out of it with a badly cut eye and a clutch of broken ribs. He was laid among the wounded who were already coming in, including some whose injuries were plainly mortal. Trinder noticed that “those whom the MO thought were completely beyond hope were given a massive injection of morphine, and put on one side to die.” He thought himself lucky.
John Killick dumped his parachute and walked up to divisional headquarters on the Arnhem landing zone, to find a divisional signals officer reciting monotonously and vainly into a handset: “Hello, Sunray, are you receiving me?” This was the first evidence of the shameful, almost comprehensive failure of 1st Airborne Division’s wireless communications, which was to dog every aspect of the battle which followed.* 4 Killick set out to walk alone into Arnhem, in pursuit of Frost’s men. A few yards down the road, he found an abandoned German BMW motorcycle. Commandeering this, he sped eastwards. A mile further on, he saw a string of German army signposts beside a house, and wandered in. This was the Tafelburg Hotel, Field-Marshal Walter Model’s headquarters at Oosterbeek, hastily abandoned by Army Group B as they saw the first paratroopers descending. Not a soul was in sight. Killick switched on a radio set, and idly picked at some meatballs on the dining-room table. After starting his day reading the Sunday papers in England, “I felt in an absurd position, now to be listening to the BBC and eating the Germans’ lunch.”
Sergeant George Schwemmer, a panzergrenadier with 10th SS Panzer at Arnhem, had been drafted to the division as a replacement after its withdrawal from Normandy. Although Schwemmer was thirty-one, he had managed to stay out of the army until 1944, performing labour service. He would have been more than happy to continue his wartime career road-building and helping with the harvest. Now instead, however, he found himself reluctantly commanding a platoon of panzergrenadiers, most of them young replacements. More than a few of of 10th SS Panzer’s soldiers were not eager Nazis, but “odds and sods” like Schwemmer, scraped together from the depots. He himself was billeted in a house on the edge of Arnhem, and ran out when he heard firing. His first glimpse of the attackers was a wrecked glider which had crashed in a field. He saw German soldiers gesturing to each other as they deployed. Dutch civilians were craning out of every house. Schwemmer shouted brusquely to them to get their heads in and close the windows. Then he ran to muster his unit, which was quickly plunged into street fighting for the town.
Field-Marshal Model, who received the surprise of his life when British paratroops began to land within two miles
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