John Nichol: Arnhem

Flight-Lieutenant Stanley Lee, quoted in Karel Margry, op. cit.

The authors are indebted to Arie-Jan van Hees, who compiled many of these accounts in his excellent book Green On! A Detailed Survey of the British Parachute Re-supply Sorties during Operation Market Garden 18–25 September 1944 . Private publication. ISBN 90–806808–2–6.

He would later become a general.

JN interview, 2010.

Van Hees, op. cit.

JN interview, 2010.

The smart London suburb where he was born.

His story is taken from his memoirs ( Six of the Best . Robson Books, 1984), as reproduced in Van Hees, op. cit.

What effect this had on the German prisoners, who, as we have seen, were corralled there, is unknown.

Anon., I Was There . Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Anon., I Was There . Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

This is an amalgamation of slightly different versions by Ennis and Webbley.

Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Major Ian Toler.

To the British, it was known as Ovaltine.

Private memoir and JN interview, 2010. The authors are grateful to Kazic Szmid’s son, Andrzej, for providing his father’s life story.

Some sources put the number of Poles deported to Siberia at 1.7 million, of whom only 400,000 are thought to have survived.

All in all, 115,000 Poles left the Soviet Union in this way, according to Polish sources.

For information about the Polish Brigade, the authors are indebted to George Cholewczynski and his encyclopaedic book, Poles Apart .

Tarrant Rush in Dorset and Keevil in Wiltshire.

Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford, and JN interview with his son, Philip Mollett, 2010.

Interview for Second World War Experience Centre, Leeds, and JN interview, July 2010.

Lloyd Clark, senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, in Arnhem: Jumping the Rhine . Headline, 2009.

Afterwards, the British generals would blame unexpected resistance and difficult terrain for their tardiness, but there were others who felt the column was never advanced with sufficient urgency.

Revd Chignell, padre of the glider pilots. Private diary. Museum of Army Chaplaincy.

See Pegasus archive: http://www.pegasusarchive.org/arnhem/graeme_warrack.htm.

Niall Cherry, Red Berets and Red Crosses , R. N. Sigmund, 1998.

Jo Johanson.

Personal memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Revd R. T. Watkins, 1 Para chaplain. Private memoir. Museum of Army Chaplaincy.

See Hamilton, op. cit. A liaison officer who visited the front reported that Horrocks believed such a bridgehead ‘difficult with present resources’.

Revd Chignell.

Quoted in Clark, op. cit.

By the end of the evacuation, only two were still operational.

Martin Middlebrook in Arnhem 1944: The Airborne Battle . Penguin, 1995.

Quoted in Cholewczynski, op. cit.

Charitably, he did not rail against this, simply wondering if the runner had been killed or had lost his way – which was entirely possible in the circumstances. It did cross his mind, however, that the rearguard had been ‘written off’. What is most puzzling about this incident is why the English officer refused to take a Polish runner along with him.

Cloud over Arnhem , by Kate ter Horst. Allan Wingate, 1959.

See Nichol and Rennell, op. cit.

Quoted in Heleen Kernkamp’s memoirs.

Kazic Szmid.

Memo to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, quoted in Hamilton, op. cit.

Bob Quayle.

See Chapter 1, note 17.

War Illustrated magazine, October 1944.

Dutch writer Johan Fabricus. Broadcast on the BBC Home Service, 27 September 1944.

The Times , 28 September 1944.

Lodged at Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

How many were in the party is disputed. Lathbury says thirty; Hibbert, sixty.

Quoted in Nichol and Rennell, op. cit.