大象传媒

The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Gord and Leslie Davison.

We moved off in the direction of the town of Oosterbeek, which is about three miles from the bridge and it was on the outskirts that we first came under fire. The Germans were finally reacting to the invasion and were organizing their forces to stop our advance. The result was that we never got any farther than the center of Oosterbeek that Sunday and settled in for the night in a rather large house, which was still occupied by a local doctor and his wife.
The company commander was trying to find out what was happening but our radios were not operating for some unknown reason so he asked the doctor if the phones were still working. On being assured that they were, then asked if there was anyone the Doctor might know who lived near the bridge that we could telephone. Our host dialed a number and, after some conversation in Dutch, told us that the second battalion had reached the bridge and were holding the north end, however they were encountering very strong opposition and the enemy were entrenched at the south end and in pill boxes in the center.
The battle for the Arnhem bridge is well documented both in the book "A Bridge Too Far" and the movie of the same name. With this in mind I will not attempt to tell the story again but will simply relate what I know first hand and my own adventures in the encounter.
Early Monday morning the Battalion moved out down the main road to Arnhem. Opposition was minimal at first but as we approached the outskirts of the city we came under increasing fire and took to the houses for cover. The occupants were still in residence in most cases and were trapped; it would be suicide to venture outside.
As we advanced slowly down the Utrechtseweg the fighting got heavier and casualties were mounting. We established regimental aid posts, in the houses as we moved along and left one or two medics in each one. The plan was to move the wounded into St. Elisabeth hospital after the situation stabilized, this was situated about a quarter of a mile ahead and was being used by the 16th Para. Field Ambulance as its main base of operations.
Unfortunately the situation was so fluid that control of the hospital changed hands frequently and we never knew for sure who was in charge at a given time. Battalion H.Q. got to within 150 yards of the hospital of the hospital and that was as far as we ever did get to the bridge.
It was now late Monday evening and we were in danger of being surrounded by the enemy and cut off from the rest of the battalion. Just prior to this we had been visited by General Urqhart and his aide who had resorted to this method of communication as none of the divisions radios were working. The powers that be decided tat H.Q. would retreat, temporarily, but as we had 17 wounded in the basement of the house someone had to look after them. Our sergeant medic said "We need a volunteer to stay behind and look after the wounded and that's you Davison".
Not that having much choice in the matter I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably be a prisoner of war in the very near future. I was left with a very good supply of morphine ampoules, sulfanilamide powder and bandages and of course, each had our compo rations. We certainly were not going to starve, although the compo rations were not very palatable. Oddly enough I did not feel hungry, there were hard-boiled candies in the rations and constantly sucking on these seemed to alleviate any hunger pains.

Continued....
'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside鈥檚 People鈥檚 War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.