Extract of Arnhem 80th Anniversary Speech
by Lieutenant General Andy Harrison DSO MBE
“They’d come from every part of the country. Mostly wearing black, rich and poor, some carrying small wreaths and bunches of flowers carefully wrapped in paper. Men of the Parachute Regiment in their red berets were lining the way.
Within a moment there wasn’t a seat in the tiny church. In the outer aisle the men of the Regiment sat all together. During their training in the summer of 1944, they must have come here Sunday after Sunday and sat in the same seats. John must have come here.
We stood for the National Anthem and we sang the hymn. Then Major General Urquhart walked to the side of the church, and as we all turned to face it, he pulled the flag off the memorial. Just a gold cross on black and the parachute emblem. Someday you must see it. It is a simple and lovely thing.
The door slowly opened and the Last Post sounded. And every heart in the church broke. You could hear the sobs you could just feel the pain, and the cost. Somehow the whole place seemed too small to contain the sorrow.
Some faces stand out. A tall grey haired, fine looking father staring straight ahead, not a tear in his eye and yet the agony of a dead child on his face. A young Parachute officer with curly hair and his chin half shot away, holding onto the back of the bench for strength. A young boy of twelve with flaxen hair, a long black coat, not crying either, but a wounded look, a deep misery in his eyes. And next to him his mother, a wealthy woman in black, oldish stout and crying, without bothering to wipe away the tears.”
So wrote Peter Howard describing the first dedication services to the fallen Arnhem. It was held in the tiny church of the English village of Somerby in 1945. Peter was in the congregation because 15 months after the battle, his brother, Lieutenant John Howard had still not returned from Arnhem. He never did. His body was never found.
“They fought on, they fought on …
With an enemy growing ever stronger pressing them at all sides but one – and that a wide swiftly flowing river, they fought on.
Without sleep, presently without food or water, at the end almost without ammunition, they fought on.
When no hope of victory remained, when all prospects of survival had vanished, when death alone could give them ease, they fought on.
… They performed a feat of arms that will be remembered and recounted as long as the virtues of courage and resolution have the power to move the hearts of men. now these things befell at Arnhem.”
So, for nine long days, in September 1944, thousands of young men were fighting for their lives, ensnared in the mesmerising theatre of death that engulfed them, they fought on.
Load masters struggled to dispatch paratroopers and desperately needed stores from torching aircraft, arcing into oblivion on Holland’s unforgiving soil. Selfless pilots, brave to their inevitable demise, making the conscious decision to try to keep their fatally compromised aircraft in the air, for just a few more seconds.
They died so others could live.
That Pegasus still bears Bellaphron above almost every house in your beautiful town. That we are here this morning. That Holland pauses every year in hushed thanks. These are your humbling tributes to all those brave souls who made the ultimate sacrifice; Dutch, British, Polish, American, others.
And now so few survivors remain. made every else nearest window we open any of the very few Sentinels; guardians of the glorious memory of their fallen brothers.3
The heroism was so deep, the scars so raw, the valour so breath-taking, that we need not the anecdotes of living witnesses to inspire the next generation. More so than any other battle, Arnhem has become the byword for courage, tenacity and daring.
Lieutenant John Howard and every one of the young Operation Market Garden warriors dare to dream. He – and they – died willing to sacrifice everything, in one bold, risk laden, endeavour to cut short the cruelty of war.
They flew in September clouds and floated under silken canopies; they glided in impossibly fragile aircraft, they tracked singular vulnerable routes. Young men willingly traded the serenity of heart and home, for the chaos and carnage of combat.
They watched the life drain from friends and colleagues. They lived Binyon’s lines: “Staunch to the end, against odds uncounted, and fell with their faces to the foe.”
They knew there was no glory in war, that victory is a passing chimera. But they dare to dream and in dreaming they gave hope to the downtrodden. In the crucible of battle, Arnhem cast a reputation of invincible courage.
Farewell my gallant friends. Rest easy, your duty done, your legend forged. You fought on.