The Battle of Arnhem by Antony Beevor

Author:Antony Beevor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC
Published: 2018-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

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Most of the wounded were taken off in the captured Jeeps to a church where a British doctor treated their wounds. The more serious cases were taken directly to the St Elisabeth Hospital. The surgeon Dr Pieter de Graaf, who had ordered the wounded to be moved back from the windows because of all the shooting in the area, was struck by how little shouting there was in the British army. When a group of SS came in to round up malingerers among the German patients, the SS doctor started shouting orders in all directions. ‘Nobody really cared,’ de Graaf noted. ‘The man yelled because there was nothing he could do but make a noise. The British and Dutch doctors just went about their business, pretending he wasn’t there.’ There had been only one civilian casualty in the last two days. An elderly patient had stuck his head out of an upstairs window to see what was going on, and was shot by a sniper. He was buried in the hospital grounds along with the bodies of British soldiers.

Although the fighting around the hospital was over, the Germans were still nervous. A tank rumbled down the road towards the St Elisabeth Hospital, its tracks making a metallic screeching sound. The turret traversed round to the right, with the gun pointing at the main entrance of the hospital. The hatch opened and a German officer in black panzer uniform appeared. He shouted that he wanted to see the director, claiming that he had been shot at from the hospital building, and unless he appeared immediately he would open fire with his tank. The German surgeon came out instead. Originally captured by the British, he had in theory assumed control when the Germans retook the hospital, but he continued to work with Dutch and British doctors as before. He told the panzer officer that he had been very well treated and he was sure nobody had fired from the hospital. The tank commander calmed down and carried on along the road towards Oosterbeek, where the next battle was about to take place.

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