Captured at Arnhem - Men’s Experiences in their own Words

Captured at Arnhem - Men’s Experiences in their own Words written

by Peter Green and published by Pen & Sword Books - £28 - Hardback - Pages 592

For the British 1st Airborne Division, Operation Market Garden in September 1944

was a disaster. The Division was eliminated as a fighting force with around half of its

men captured.

The Germans were faced with dealing with 6,000 prisoners in a fortnight; many of them seriously wounded. The POWs were processed and despatched to camps around Germany and German-occupied eastern Europe, here the men experienced the reality of the collapsing regime with little food and shrinking frontiers.

Operation Endor was put in place after the liberation in 1945 which required returning POWs to complete liberation questionnaires on their release and repatriation to Britain. Unfortunately, this was put in place after some had already returned however around a third of those captured, some 2,357, did complete the questionnaires giving a picture of everyday life of these elite troops time in captivity from capture to release.

These questionnaires show that men were often treated inhumanely, particularly when moved to camps by closed box cars and when camps were evacuated. Although the German interrogators were predominately interested in Allied aircraft and airfields, they were also concerned with politics and how Germany would be treated after an Allied victory.

Despite the terrible conditions and interrogations, the airborne men’s morale remained high; carrying out sabotage at artificial oil plants, railway repairs, factories and mines. Some overcame their guards when being evacuated at the end of the war, in some cases joining the Resistance and they recorded help received from Dutch, French and German civilians.

Wow, one just has to start this review with that as the work, research, effort and time that has gone into this book by the author Peter Green is immense. This book is a huge collection of information from records, interviews and questionnaires from the men who took part in Operation Market Garden, which attempted to take a number of bridges in Holland in order to forge an advance against Germany. Due to the failure of the operation, the Germans had to handle and deal with around 6,000 prisoners, with varying degrees of help given to the prisoners. As some were well treated and others were treated particularly poorly by their captors. 

There is great information in this book, as many were forced to walk great distances to various types of camps, many were forced to work to support the German machine and some shall we say were made to talk. This has been a fantastic book to read, packed with much valuable information, and I have to heap an awful lot of praise on the author who has done some great work and research. The only downside I could think of was as much of the information is in tables, it was always the easiest book to read practically, but this is such a minor issue. A really good book I would recommend to anyone, if I could put a number of stars at the end of this review, I'd put 5 stars.