The Epic Struggle of the First Airborne Division
Word of Evacuation

That morning we had our usual mortar barrage. Between 0720 and 0805 we counted 133 shells exploding near division headquarters. This was not an unusual number; we just happened to count that morning for want of anything better to do. About 1500 we heard the news that we were evacuating that night. Then we got the news that there were 100 Germans, infantry with machine guns, in the woods to the south, between us and the river. we thought they must know our plans.

We called on the 43d Division artillery, south of the river, and they shelled the woods heavily 3 times before dark and once after dark. The waiting from 1500 to 2200 was nerve-wracking. I thought I might have to swim, and I knew my injured leg would make that difficult, so I took off my combat pants, canteen, and everything I could spare, and destroyed them. I burned the confidential authentification document and used the ashes to blacken my face and hands.  The edge of our perimeter had been bombed and strafed by Marauders, Thunderbolts, and Typhoons, and we hoped it would look as if were going to attack. A rocket firing Typhoon hit the Nebelwerfer mortar which had been giving us the most trouble and reported, "All rockets on target." This gun was the six-barrel type, and after it was hit the shelling became much lighter.

We divided into groups of 10 and were to leave division headquarters at 15-minute intervals. I was in the party of Maj. Gen. R E. Urquhart, Commanding General of the division, and our party was to leave at 2215 hours, with the first group departing at 2145 hours.

A mortar shelling started about 2100. The Germans usually did not shell at night, and we thought again that they knew what we were up  to, but at 2135 the shelling stopped. General Urquhart filled a cup with whiskey and we all took a sip. The glider pilots' chaplain came in and prayed and led us all in the Lord's Prayer.

The first two parties moved out. Colonel Preston asked me how I thought my foot would hold up. I told him that as soon as I got excited I'd forget I had a foot. Moving outside, we sat in slit trenches to accustom our eyes to the darkness. Our orders were not to return fire unless so ordered by our party leader. I took one last look at division headquarters and the surrounding grounds. I have never seen such a vista of destruction, not even in Montebourg and Valognes, for there everything had been cleanly bombed and there were no woods around. At division headquarters, the ground and surrounding works were shredded. Large trees had been cut up until they were only tall, bare sticks. The smell of gunpowder was everywhere. The big, four-story house was a shambles. Part of the roof was blown in; there wasn't a window in the place, nor had there been for days; the walls were torn out in several places; and the dead were everywhere. From the first we had been unable to bury the dead.

We walked along a road behind hedges until we reached an open field commanded by an enemy machine gun. As we crawled, a very bright light went up, but apparently we were unobserved. We moved on into the woods again. As we stopped to rest and squatted down, the man behind me pitched forward on his face. I thought he had seen something, so I hit the dirt too. Then I rolled him over and saw that he was dead. He was the 14th man to be killed within a few feet of me. the others by mortar fire.

We got through to the river plain and crossed another bad stretch of about 200 yards. The dead and dying were everywhere. We reached the river bank and lay down in the mud to wait for our turn in the barges, of which there were 5, holding 12 men each. By this time it was raining, which helped, since it reduced visibility. We held about 500 yards of the north bank and the 43d Division about 600 yards of the south bank. The barges kept crossing back and forth.

General Urquhart had the wounded had the wounded taken across first; then his party got aboard. And then the last straw--the darned engine wouldn't start, and the current was too swift to paddle across. After much struggling and swearing, the engine finally started, and we got across unmolested.

We walked about 3 1/2 miles to a place where a rest point had been set up. There we were given hot tea, biscuits, rum, and cigarettes; but something had gone wrong--we could eat and drink very little, but we couldn't smoke enough to satisfy us. Our nerves were still in knots. We were moved another 2 miles in "ducks," had more tea and biscuits, then were moved by truck to Nijmegen, where we had a marvelous hot meal, dozens of cigarettes, and all the liquor we could drink. But we still had trouble getting food and drink down. We pulled off our muddy clothes and went to bed.

That night and the following night we had a few bombs, but nothing serious. In Nijmegen we found S/L Wheeler and F/L Richards, who we thought had been killed on the LZ. They told me that F/L Tisshon and the other 16 men had been mission since they landed. Wheeler and Richards had carried their secret beacon for several days, then had destroyed it.

The next day, Wednesday, S/L Coxon arranged with W/C Barnard for us to ride to Eindhoven in the wing commander's jeep. At Eindhoven, arrangements were made for us to ride in a C-47 to Brussels, and at Brussels I was booked on a C-47 to Croydon. I came with Lieutenant Colonel Preston of the 1st Airborne Division, Guy Byum, a BBC correspondent who had been with us at Arnhem, and several other people.

All through the operation the Luftwaffe was active, but it was a very peculiar activity. The FW 190's and Me 109's were over every day except two, and their tactics were always the same. They would sweep back and forth at about 4,000 feet, drop to 2,000 feet, and then peel off as if to strafe us. But I doubt that they fired more than 500 rounds in all the passes they made at us. It looked as if they were afraid to use their ammunition and then be unarmed if our fighters came, and as if they were simply trying to boost German morale.

What must have shaken enemy morale was the guts of our resupply plane crews. Day after day they would wade in at 800 to 900 feet, right through a terrible flak barrage. The only day on which flak was not heavy was when P-47's flew escort, and most of the ack-ack did not open up for fear of being spotted and strafed.