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

I had removed everybody but one by about 5 P.M. I put the last of my charges on the stretcher and started down the street, but before I got to my destination I realized that the situation had changed for the worse.
The hospital was guarded by Dutch S.S. men and it was obvious that we had lost control again. By pure luck, nobody had spotted us and I pushed the gurney into the last house on the street before the hospital. Fortunately my patient was not too badly wounded and was able to walk with assistance.
We discussed the situation and decided that we would hide in the house in the hopes that our forces would finally prevail and we would eventually get him to surgery. We determined that there were no civillians in the house and decided to hide under the bed until we could decide what to do next. We spent most of the next 24 hours sleeping, with the exception that twice we were awaken by the sound of heavy footsteps, obviously army boots. Its rather amazing but in each case nobody decided to look under the bed, both times it was German soldiers who tramped through the house and it was apperant that they were clearing the houses of our troups by going through each one to see if any were occupied.
By about 10A.M. on the Wednessday morning the fighting all around the hospital area had quietened down considerably, with the Germans in complete control, and about this time we heard more footsteps, which proved to belong to two Dutch doctors from the hospital, they went through the house calling out "Hollander! Hollander!" so we cralled out from under the bed and they told us they had seen us go into the house the night before but this was the first chance they had to come over.
They told each of us to get on a gurney and then they covered us completely with a white bed sheet. They said that they woud try to get us into the hospital as if we were dead, otherwise we might be fired on by the Dutch S.S. who were guarding the hospital. For reasons which I had never understood, it seemed that the Dutch S.S. were more vicious in their general conduct than the Wehrmacht soldiers.
We set off across the road to the hospital and fortunately we had no trouble, we were wheeled straight into the chapel, which was being used as a mortuary. There were no Germans present so we hopped off the gurneys and I escorted my patient to the surgery where there was quite a queue of wounded waiting to be operated on. I informed the senior medical officer of what happened to us and he said "Jolly good show" and immediately put me to work in the wards.
We were very short of medical staff and a two-shift system had been worked out, each shift being twelve hours. For the next ten days or so it was simply work and sleep. All the beds were occupied and dozens of wounded were lined up against the corridor walls, sleeping in their bedrolls. We had two well-known patients, Brigadier Lathbury and Brigadier Hackett. Both had removed their officer's insignia and were referred to as corporal. Hackett was very seriously wounded, with internal injuries to his stomach, but Lathbury only had a leg injury, as far as I can remember, and the underground forces quickly rescued him.
Hackett was also spirited away after he had recovered a little, and his story is well told in the book, "I was a Stranger" and also in Leo Heaps book "The Grey Goose of Arnhem". The St. Elisabeth hospital was run by German nuns, who stayed on and worked with us, the medical forces of both sides worked together and there was no favoritism as far as who was next for surgery. The surgeons decided who were the more seriously wounded and operated on them in order, German or British, it made no difference.
The battle was over on the 28th of September, that evening about 2,000 of the original 10,000 who landed were evacuated across the Rhine to the forward Allied lines and the final batches of wounded were brought in from Oosterbeek, where the division had made its last stand.

Continued...
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