Rifleman by Victor Gregg

Author:Victor Gregg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408817575
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

28

The Witches’ Cauldron: Der Hexenkessel

Our perimeter measured roughly a mile by a mile and a half and in the middle of it was the Hartenstein Hotel. We had lost contact with the lads of the 2nd Battalion who were still battling it out around the bridge in Arnhem itself. We were running out of ammunition, although the small group of us around the Vickers gun got preferential treatment, perhaps because we were on the eastern side of the defence line and were taking the brunt of the attacks. There were a dozen men around my position, and we were in dire straits. I think the rest of the force was down to about twelve or fifteen hundred men, but I am not sure. If we weren’t relieved within the next two days we would be defending ourselves with sticks and stones. We were aware that, while most of the Germans were treating prisoners well, we had also seen evidence of the massacre of prisoners by SS units. None of us wanted to be captured.

In spite of everything, we had no thought of surrender. We saw the battle now as a fight to the finish. There were as many Germans dead and wounded as our own number and, in the main, the few prisoners we had managed to capture and hold on to were very dejected. A lot of them had fought their way across Russia and said they had never experienced the ferocity of the battle they were now fighting.

Being dug into a defensive position had one advantage: the number of casualties began to drop, and the main threat was now the incessant mortaring and shelling. It seemed to me that the enemy, because they were now the attackers, were sustaining more injuries than ourselves.

Day after day the battle raged, the dead and dying of both sides filling the ground all around us. Short truces were arranged to collect the wounded. The dead we left where they lay and the bodies, some of which had been there since the first day, were becoming bloated, stretching against their uniforms like balloons, a grotesque sight. Some of the lads who were in action for the first time found the sight of those bodies very difficult. In the end they got used to it, but they would never forget what they had seen. None of us would ever be able to cleanse our minds of the horror.

By the morning of 25 September it was obvious to everyone that the end was near. We hadn’t eaten for two days, there was no water except what we managed to collect from puddles of rain­water, and then the word came round that there was to be an attempted breakout that night. A small British force had arrived on the other side of the river with collapsible boats that would ferry us across. No one was to move until told to do so by an officer. I wondered how many officers were left. At nine o’clock that

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