大象传媒

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Enza Stellato of the GMR Action Desk on behalf of John Slatterly and has been added to the site with his niece's permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

Operation Market Garden was over, Arnhem was a deserted town as we were driven through it on our way to prison camps and hospitals away from the crippled bridge that had been held so helplessly, the bridge to freedom now a twisted ruin, its broken fingers washed by the river Rhine.

I had taken no part in the cruel battle, but had flown over from Brizenorton airfield near Oxford with the first Airlanding Brigade, a boy going to war for the first time, eager and afraid at the same moment. It was a glorious Sunday morning when we left, and England was going to church on the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Britain on Sunday 17th. We in our glider towed by American crewed Dakota were in the first wave and were soon over the coast of HOlland.

Fighter planes had gone in before us and there were fires below, then suddenly the landing zone Oesterbeek, a small lolocaust of fire and noise, tracer bullets, were crossing the sky and puffs of smoke erupted as shells exploded all around as the silent descending gliders there was no retuning now. The planes had cast us off and we hissed our way to earth. Our glider was tree high when the tracers found us. The glider pilot was hit first in this right shoulder, the same burst picked its way along the length of the glider and shattered my femur in an explosion of blood as the glider nosse dived into the trees.

I awoke on Monday morning in a farmhouse with my leg encased in cold wet plaster, I was lucky, our doctoers had operated on me on the Sunday evening, and in a slight hangover of morphia I lay on my stretcher and wondered what was happening outside. Two stretcher bearers came in, full of banel chatter that I welcomed. (home for you tonight lad, sending a plane specially they are,) and carried me out to a utility truck, another shot of morphine (because the roads are a bloody mess and we want you to be comfy, don't we?) and then oblivion.

I came round to find myself lying in the lounge of the HOtel Tafelberg, still on my stretcher and still in Oesterbeek just a couple of miles from Arnhem. I lay there with other casualties although the bitter days, hungry and afraid, with the daylight blocked out by mattresses at the windows, night becoming day and each hour worse than the last, until silence... the battle was over, the only sounds now were the singing of the birds and the noises of the German trucks arriving to transport us to captivity.

Apeldoorn is about twelve miles from Arnhem and it was here that Queen Wilhlmina had her summer palace Het Leo, which was now being used by the Germans for a hospital. We were brought to this lovely town to the Wilhelm the third barracks all the wounded to be sorted out, badly wounded - not fit for travel, and walking wounded able to be moved to Germany when transport was available.

My leg by now was a mass of maggots, corrupted flesh and bad blood and stench was overpowering. I was given another operation to cut way the rotted flesh and generally clean me up and then along with seventy two other badly wounded was taken to the Juliena Hospital which the strange reasoning the Germans had renamed The Hospital. After Oesterbeck and the barracks with their dscemforts the hospital wa an oasis of comfort and the rapport between the British patients and Dutch staff was natural and affecting.

We were tended by all Dutch doctors, sisters and maids, supervised by their German overseers and were in twelve bed wards in this most modern hospital. The windows in the ward doors were blocked out in an effort to prevent civilian visitors from looking in at us, but each visiting day the doors wouldsuddenly open and gifts of tobacco or cigarettes thrown on the nearest bed, the victory sign given by a stranger's hand or a muffled greeting souted and the doors would close again. On Sundays, however, the Germans relaxed the non fraternisation rules and we were allowed a Dutch choir, accompanied by a portable Organ, singing outside our doors once in the mornings and again the evenings , and these good people could then enter the wards and pass a few pleasantries with us. Our two Church of England padres, who had surrendered with us, also visited us on Sunday to administer communiion and to give us the news of the week from St. Joseph's Hospital, also in Apeldoorn, where they were incarcerated. They always arrived very frandly in neat battle dress and red berets, and althoughon parole, were always accompanied by a German guard on a bicycle.
The mass for the Roman Catholics amongst us was given by local Dutch priests, who practised their usually terrible English on us, Sunday wasdefinitively our day of the week! We were allowed to have threecigarettes per day from the Germans, deliverd by elderly guards,who apologised for the small ration, these jaded soldiers knew the war wasgoing to end in defeat for them and were the absolute opposite of the arrogant young zealots of the Herman Goering division who had guarded in the barracks, these poor little men were more prisoners of war than we were.

I had another operation two days after entering the hospital, the plaster was taken from my leg and a steel pin was inserted through the femur bone, slightly below the break, the pin was attached to a horseshoe, aldo of steel, through which a cord was threaded, this going over a pulley at the end of the bed. Weights were attached to the cord thus pulling the broken bones part allowing new bone to grow. Ialong with every other man in my ward was immobile and so the germans were unable to move us further inland anas the good Dutch doctor Pilar who performed the operation, told me "I intend to keep you all here until we are liberated". We were visited almost daily by beautifully smelling German officers, usually accompanied by Dr. Pilar, who had become quite a sophist in his handling of them, officers in all manner of mysterious uniforms and insignia, apparently they were just curious to se us whist passing through Apeldoorn.

It was my second Turesday in the Hospital and just after six o' clock in the evening when the three sisters in our ward, (the nurses were all called sisters), quickly cleaned the supper implements away, more quickly tan usual, I asked the reason and was told "more Germans are coming to see you and don't bother us we are busy". The latter remark was spoken quite good humouredly as in jest. My bed was the first on the left as one entered the ward and invariably any persons, German and Dutch, coming in to do a round would start from the right; consequently I was always the last man to be approached, and this Tuesday evening the order was as before. At 6.30 the ward doors opened and in stepped six of the most elegantly dressed German officers I had yet seen. Usually the visiting officers wore their caps and someitmes, mackintoshes or overcoats, but these men looked as thought they had just stepped from a mess room and were entering the ward for an after dinner drink. Immacualate wa the only word to describe them, from head to foot they were perfect.

The first to enter gave us their usual all time greeting "Heil Hitler", and then stepped back slightly to lethis jack booted superior enter, a tall man wiht a slight limp, wearing rimless spectacles, with his hair cropped short in a crew cut. As they started the round, scent pervaded over everything, the hospital smell vanished and there was the strange sister assisted the officers, pulling back bed covers, which moments before had meticulously straightened, to allow wounds an leg contraptions to be viewed.
I watched the entourage stop at each bed, their chief asking questions in German which was translated to the man in the bed and the answers re-translated back into German. He looked sympathetic modding his head quite often as though agreeing with the replies. Then they came to me, seeming relieved that the round was over, questions were fiew, but just as they turned to go the senior officer touched my wounded leg and glanced again at the wounds, with the purs flowing quite freely from them. "Pain", he asked in English, and then they were gone.
Shortly afterwards one of the sisters came into the ward with four bottles of Advocate, which had been sent to us by the high ranking officer with his cimpliments, "Who was he" I asked "He seemed quite a gentleman".
"That man" she replied softly "is our German governor of Holland".

This then was Seyss Inquaart, who had become governor of Austria at the time of the Ansehluss and then with the Dutch people.

Shortly after his visit to us, this eminent man was to have 100 hostages shot on the Arnhem-Apeldoorn road, on the very spot where an ambush by the underground on the Dutch collaborator Rueter Failed. This gentle man was to be tried after the war at Nuremberg as one of the principal Nazi criminals tried, condemned and executed for his crimes against humanity.

John Slatterly died in 1978 and his niece sent us this story, which he wrote himself .

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