Bridge Too Far by Ryan Cornelius

Author:Ryan, Cornelius [Ryan, Cornelius]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, General Fiction, military history, Battle of, Arnhem, Second World War, Net, War, Europe, 1944, World history: Second World War, Western, History - Military, Western Continental Europe, Netherlands, 1939-1945, War & defence operations, Military, General & world history, History, World War II, Western Europe - General, Military - World War II, History: World, Military History - World War II, Europe - History
ISBN: 9780684803302
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1974-04-11T06:00:00+00:00

on the high escarpment of the railway marshaling yards to the north,

waiting machine-gun crews opened up. And from the brickworks across

the Rhine multibarreled flak guns, firing horizontally, ripped into

Dobie’s battalion and flayed Fitch’s men as they tried to move along

the lower Rhine road. Fitch’s battalion, already badly mauled in the

fight-

since landing two days before, was now so cut to pieces by the unremitting flak fire that it could no longer exist as an effective unit. Men broke in confusion. They could go neither forward nor back. With virtually no protection on the open road, they were methodically mowed down. “It was painfully obvious,” says Captain Ernest Seccombe, “that the Jerries had much more ammunition than we did. We tried to move in spurts, from cover to cover. I had just begun one dash when I was caught in a murderous crossfire. I fell like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t even crawl.” Seccombe, who had been hit in both legs, watched helplessly as two Germans approached him. The British captain, who spoke fluent German, asked them to look at his legs. They bent down and examined his wounds. Then one of the Germans straightened up. “I’m sorry, Herr Hauptmann,” he told Seccombe. “I’m afraid for you the war is over.” The Germans called their own medics and Seccombe was taken to St. Elisabeth’s Hospital. * * Throughout most of the Arnhem battle, the hospital was used by both British and German doctors and medics to care for their wounded. Seccombe, as a German prisoner, was moved to the small Dutch town of Enschede, about five miles from the German border. During his stay there, both legs were amputated. He was liberated in April, 1945.

By chance one of Fitch’s officers discovered the presence of Dobie’s forces on the lower road, and the men of the 1/ Battalion, despite their own heavy casualties, hurried forward, toward the pitiable remnants of Fitch’s group. Dobie was now hell bent on reaching the bridge, but the odds were enormous. As he moved up into the intense fire and leapfrogged over Fitch’s men, Dobie himself was wounded and captured (he later succeeded in making his escape); by the end of the day it was estimated that only forty men of his battalion remained. Private Walter Boldock was one of them. “We kept trying to make it, but it was a disaster. We were constantly mortared, and German tanks whirled right up to us. I tried to get one with my Bren gun and then we seemed to be going backwards. I passed a broken water main. A dead civilian in blue overalls lay in the gutter, the water lapping gently around his body. As we left the outskirts of Arnhem, I knew somehow we wouldn’t be going back.”

Fitch’s men, attempting to follow Dobie’s battalion, were shredded once again. The march had lost all meaning; after-action reports indicate the total confusion within the battalion at this point. “Progress was satisfactory until we reached the area of the dismantled pontoon bridge,” reads the 3rd Battalion’s report.

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