Liveblogging World War II: September 19, 1944: Arnhem
James Sims: 19 September 1944: Arnhem becomes a desperate battle for survival:
After the failure of the ‘Grand Prix’ attack the Germans withdrew a short distance and began to mortar and shell our positions systematically for the first time. The very air seemed to wail and sigh with the number of projectiles passing through it. The enemy had also brought up some self-propelled artillery, heavy stuff, and against this we were virtually helpless. One by one the houses held by the paratroopers were set alight. There was nothing to fight the fires with, even if we had been able to.
The airborne soldiers kept on firing from the blazing buildings even with the roof fallen in; then they moved to the second floor, then to the first, and finally to the basement. Only when this was alight did they evacuate the building and take over another. As each hour passed we were driven into a smaller and smaller area. Casualties began to mount rapidly. Our food and water were practically gone, but worst of all the ammunition was running short. Soon we heard tank engines and thought at first they were ours; but they were German panzers cautiously probing their way into the bloody arena to add the sharp crack of their 75 and 88mm guns to the already overwhelming bombardment.
It seemed impossible that the shelling and mortaring could get any worse, but they did. The separate explosions now merged into one almost-continuous rolling detonation and the earth shook as if it was alive. My head sang and I was numb to any feeling beyond, the basic instinct to survive. I began to realise the full significance of the phrase ‘bomb-happy’. Yet even in this terrific concentration of fire not one bomb or shell splinter landed in a slit-trench or mortar pit: it was unbelievable, little short of miraculous. It is only when one has been through this sort of experience that one can understand how soldiers in the past stood in lines facing each other and fired by numbers.
With each successive salvo of mortar bombs I screwed my steel helmet further into the comforting earth and clawed at the silty soil at the bottom of the trench. I kept repeating to myself over and over again, ‘Hold on . . . hold on . . . you must hold on.’ To be alone at the bottom of that trench was like lying in a newly dug grave waiting to be buried alive. Each fresh explosion sent rivulets of earth crumbling around my helmet and into the sides of my mouth. After another avalanche of explosions I started praying, and really meaning it, for the first time in my life.
Overhead a lone Messerschmitt fighter plane circled lazily. If the pilot was spotting for the enemy artillery he had an almost impossible task as the Germans and ourselves were so close together, even sharing the same houses in some cases. Perhaps he was just curious — it was certainly the only aircraft I saw throughout the battle. What had happened to the mighty Allied air forces God only knew. Something whistled down into the slit-trench and hit my boot. In one split second I suffered agonies visualising extinction, but as nothing happened I gingerly reached towards my ankle and retrieved the tail fin of a German mortar bomb, still warm from flight. It must have been blown into my trench from an exploding missile nearby.
The bombardment suddenly ceased and there was an uncanny quiet, which was abruptly shattered by the eruption of an enemy infantry attack from underneath the bridge directly in front of our positions. This desperate assault came to nothing and those not cut down fled in disorder.
See James Sims: Arnhem Spearhead: A Private Soldier’s Story
