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.

D-Day, Arnhem & The Rhine

D-Day, Arnhem & The Rhine written by Robert F. Ashby and published

by Pen & Sword Books - £20 - Hardback - Pages 176

Foot soldiers, commandos, parachutists, naval seamen, bomber and fighter pilots –

their varied personal experiences of the Second World War have been widely recounted,

and the parts they played in the conflict are well known. But there are specialized wartime

roles that have received very little attention, notably the gallant actions of the men of the

Glider Pilot Regiment. That is why Robert Ashby’s rare and vivid pilot’s memoir is so

valuable. In it he offers a fascinating insight not only into the major operations he took

part in – including D-Day, Arnhem and the Rhine crossing – but into the exacting flying

skills required to carry out perilous glider landings on enemy territory while under fire.

His account of his hair-raising training, together with his pen-portraits of his comrades and officers, takes the reader inside the world of a ‘citizen soldier’. The glider landings at Arnhem and the intense fighting that followed are the climax of his narrative, offering us a remarkable insight into one of the most controversial Allied disasters of the entire war.

This book is about the life of Robert Ashby, a pilot who was involved in Operation Market Garden and the Operation on D-day in Normandy, what makes a difference to these is that they are the personal papers and writings of this airman. Ashby was lucky in that due to the mess of Market Garden, he wasn’t captured in Arnhem and managed to make it back to Britain. His thoughts on this particular part of his life are interesting in that we know how hard it was to take the bridges in Arnhem and many were under threat from the Germans. But this shows the importance of personal papers from individuals such as Robert Ashby.

This 177-page book was an interesting book and one you don’t really hear much about in his role as a glider pilot, but a quite interesting read. I would recommend this book as you don’t often get books about this role in the war.