大象传媒

THE ISLAND

As it flows into Holland, the Rhine splits into two rivers, the southern branch being called the Waal and the northern branch being called the Neder Rijn (or, sometimes, the Lek). In operation Market Garden, the US 82nd Airborne Division landed at Grave and fought their way into Nijmegen, supported by the British Guards Armoured Division. There was a big road bridge over the Waal, shaped rather like the bridge at Newcastle, but it was under fire from the enemy and the Americans had to cross the river in storm boats manned by the Canadian Engineers; after a ferocious battle supported by the Guards tanks firing across the river, they succeeded in making a secure landing.

The area between the two rivers was very low-lying and several dykes ran between them and so it was entirely surrounded by water; consequently, it was called 鈥渢he Island鈥�. The Neder Rijn was very deep and fast-flowing and this made it impossible for the Americans to act in support of the British Airborne who had landed in the area of Arnhem, the other side of the river. Having reached their objective, the Americans were withdrawn to prepare for their next operations and we went across the road bridge to relieve them. We found that the ground was so waterlogged that it was impossible to dig slit trenches and so we made defensive positions inside houses and farm buildings; because the whole Island could be observed by the enemy, we stayed inside them by day and only came out after dark to patrol the area.

Everything was very quiet and uneventful; however, one night, a patrol reported that they thought that the water level in the ditches seemed to be rising, but Battalion HQ replied that they must have been looking at them too long and told them to get on with the patrol. Later, there was a particularly heavy artillery barrage on all the roads on the Island but, because no one was wandering about on them at the time, there were no casualties. Then, firing suddenly stopped; immediately afterwards, an urgent message from HQ told us that the water was indeed rising and that we should get to hell out of our positions because the Germans had blown the dykes and water was rushing in from the Lek. Our trucks were able to drive over the flooded roads to the road bridge and so back to Nijmegen, but there was no room in them for the 鈥減oor bloody infantry鈥� and we had to walk out of our positions through the flood, sometimes up to our waists in the water which, because this was November, was freezing cold.

Strangely, not a single shell was fired at us when we were on the roads; had the barrage been repeated, we would have suffered heavy casualties. We can only conclude that the enemy had planned that we would have noticed the flood much earlier and would have been on the roads when the first barrage was fired at us; we were lucky that our first report had been ignored and that the enemy had not bothered to check if their plan was working!

On our arrival at the north bank of the Waal, we were embarked in the Canadian storm boats which had previously taken the Americans across the river in the other direction. These boats were like huge bathtubs with powerful outboard engines at the back and they started to ferry us back to Nijmegen; at least, that was the idea, but the boat I was in broke down in the middle of the river; whichever way we drifted we would reach areas held by the enemy, but happily another boat almost collided with us in the dark and took us on tow to safety.

At the other side of the river, we were put into trucks which took us to a farm village where I got down to sleep in a barn and slept for about ten hours; when I woke up, my clothes had completely dried on me.

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