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I WAS THE LUCKY ONE
I was 19 when thousands around me died in war – and I was captured as a POW. Now I’m going back for very special reason
Geoff Roberts counts this Dutch village as his second home
HE was among 35,000 men who fought the Germans for nine long days in one of the bloodiest battles of World War Two.
But 80 years on, Geoff Roberts, now 99, was the only one left to return to the Dutch city of Arnhem.
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In September 1944, British and US troops took part in the biggest airborne invasion ever, a daring attack 60 miles behind enemy lines, in a bid to end the global conflict.
But Operation Market Garden, focused on the capture of three key Nazi-held bridges over the River Rhine, including one in Arnhem, was a disaster.
Only 2,000 British troops returned — the rest were killed or taken prisoner.
Yesterday, Private Roberts visited the cemetery where his two best friends who lost their lives are buried in a wooded glade filled with white headstones.
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Among over 1,500 graves, almost side-by-side lie Lance Corporal Leonard Plummer, 24, and 25-year-old Private Robert Brown, who never got to come home to his fiancée, Isa.
Pushed in a wheelchair by his son-in-law, Geoff solemnly saluted their headstones, as he does every year.
And in an exclusive interview, he told the incredible story of how he survived the bloody Battle of Arnhem in a mission that was later graphically described in the 1974 book and 1977 film, A Bridge Too Far.
‘Bit of a ding-dong’
He also said that, at the end of a long life well lived, he is to be buried in the same perfectly tended plots as his pals.
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Close to tears, he added: “I can think of no better place for my ashes to be than here, reunited with my mates who never came home.”
Geoff has left precise instructions that his remains be buried in a small box, placed behind the two headstones in Row 25A at the CWGC's Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery.
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He has been back there so many times, he counts this Dutch village as his second home.
He and his daughters Nicola, 61, and Claire, 57, are always welcomed as friends.
Geoff, of Peterborough, Cambs, is expected to meet Princess Anne during his current trip to Holland.
She is standing in for the King at a commemoration in Oosterbeek Cemetery, where 1,700 UK servicemen lie.
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In his heartfelt account of the wartime conflict, Geoff recalls how he was a 19-year-old private in the 7th Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers when, on the morning of Sunday, September 17, 1944, he left RAF Down Ampney in Gloucester in a 30-seater Horsa glider towed by an RAF plane.
On board were two pilots and 28 troops, a handcart to carry ammo and food, plus two bicycles.
Geoff was one of 765 men from the battalion who flew to Holland.
By the end of the Battle of Arnhem, 112 were dead, 76 were evacuated back to Britain and 577 reported missing.
Geoff remembered: “We didn’t even know we were going to Holland.
“I was in seat 28 and my mate Butch Craig, in seat 30, got a load of shrapnel up through the bottom of his seat and into his bum. That was when the war became real.
“A couple of the seats fell off the side of the plane.”
Their landing site at Wolfheze, six miles from Arnhem, was calm. Geoff recalled: “There wasn’t a German in sight when we landed — dead quiet.
“But then it started getting a bit naughty.”
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He and his comrades made their way to nearby Ginkel Heath, to secure the area for a second wave of Paras to land there the next day.
At 6ft 3in, Geoff — nicknamed Lofty — and his section had been given the job of protecting Sergeant George Barton, who was in charge of a six-pounder anti-tank gun.
Geoff said: “They were supposed to have been there at ten o’clock on the Monday but, because of bad weather in England, they didn’t get there till four in the afternoon.
"By that time, Jerry [the German forces] had woken up, and we had a bit of a ding-dong. It was my first time in action.”
With the Paras safely landed, the men of the 7th Battalion were sent to Johanna Hoeve, a farm where Polish allies were due to land in gliders on September 19 with much-needed Jeeps, weapons and ammunition.
Geoff, with pals Leonard and Robert, huddled in small trenches for protection.
He says: “That’s when the chaos started, because the Germans, the Dutch and 156 Para Battalion were pulling back through us.
“Everybody’s shooting. I was in one trench and Plummer and Brown were in another with a Bren gun. Brown called out, ‘Plummer’s had it’.
"There was another burst of Bren fire and it went quiet, so he obviously got it.
“From then on, it was bedlam.”
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Battling for survival
By then, around 500 of the 750 soldiers who had set off from England with Geoff had been killed or captured.
He and his comrades made their way from the farm towards the village of Oosterbeek, three miles from Arnhem, catnapping in craters and trenches along the way.
By Tuesday evening, they arrived at the Hotel Dreyeroord — aka the White House — a large building where they could safely dig in.
Geoff said: “I don’t remember how we got there, but it’s only half a mile, if that. It wasn’t operating as a hotel, but a family were living there.
Our colonel, being a typical Englishman, knocked on the door and asked, ‘Can we put some trenches in your garden?’. The man welcomed us.
“Two days later, the place was a wreck. We were only there for two and a half days, but it felt more like two and a half months.
“The Germans were trying to drive us out, but the old colonel decided to drive them out with the bayonet.”
When you get dropped 60 miles beyond enemy lines, you’ve got to be lucky, haven’t you?
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Payton- Reid had fought in World War One.
Geoff said: “He was one of those blokes who believed that a bayonet could sort everything, except a tank.
“I didn’t take part in the beginning of the bayonet charge — we came back and caught the tail end of it.
“It was one of the most frightening things I’ve ever been in. There were a lot of Germans.
“A lot of the time, even though it was a bayonet charge, you still kept pulling the trigger, which was a bit unfair, I suppose, but it worked.
“We chased them out of the White House, but we lost a lot of blokes — about 12 or 14 — and Jerry must have lost the same amount.”
Short of food, ammo and cigarettes, the troops had to rely for resupply on RAF parachute drops, which often landed in the wrong place.
After leaving the White House, they finally reached Oosterbeek.
D Company Sergeant Major Jimmy Swanson had been shot in the leg by a sniper and Geoff helped him hobble to the regimental aid post in a bungalow.
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Every room was crammed with the wounded, who were sharing the house with an unexploded shell.
Bodies were piled high in the garden.
A Dutch family was living in the cellar, including a woman who was heavily pregnant with her first child.
At one point, a medic asked Geoff: “Are you a stretcher bearer?”
He recalled: “I said, ‘No!’ and was told, ‘Well, you are now!’. ”
Killed a pet rabbit
Soldiers dug up veg from the garden and killed a pet rabbit to cook for wounded comrades, sharing it with the family in the cellar.
Plaster dust caused by exploding bombs helped to thicken the soup they made.
At the aid post, Geoff was making a brew for his pal, Bill Nash, when a sniper’s bullet went through the side of Bill’s face, split his tongue and exited through his jaw. He survived.
On the night of September 26, the 7th Battalion were on standby to withdraw to safety over the River Rhine.
But Geoff said: “Our guide never turned up. We don’t know whether he got killed or lost.
“In the morning, a big German sergeant major and two squaddies with rifles walked in. In perfect English he said, ‘For you, the war is over’.
“Then he hands over a packet of Woodbines — our own cigarettes!”
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Geoff was bundled into a Bren gun carrier driven by the Germans and taken into Arnhem.
He said: “I was interrogated by an officer. We were lucky. Some chaps got captured by the SS and they didn’t do so good.
“We were captured by blokes the same as we were. They didn’t want to be there any more.”
Geoff and his comrades were marched for seven hours to the Dutch city of Zutphen, then herded on to rail wagons to Stalag XIIA prisoner of war camp on the German border at Limburg. From there, he travelled for three days to Czechoslovakia.
In 2019, at a commemoration to mark the 75th anniversary of Arnhem — a battle which saw five Victoria Crosses awarded, four of them posthumous — Prince Charles asked Geoff: “Did they take you somewhere ghastly?”
Geoff said: “I told him, ‘Yes, down a bloody coal mine’.”
We failed, and they paid a heavy price for us trying to liberate them, but they’re still greeting us now and thanking us, after all this time
In his wallet, Geoff still carries the metal prisoner’s dog tag he would use to cut up what little food PoWs were given.
He said: “One day, we came back from work and the Germans had gone.”
The prisoners had been liberated by the Russians, who told them to wait for the US army to arrive.
But, after a week of hanging around, Geoff and two pals stole some bikes and headed west to freedom.
He said: “Anybody that got back was lucky, no doubt.
“Because when you get dropped 60 miles beyond enemy lines, you’ve got to be lucky, haven’t you?”
The people of Arnhem and Oosterbeek were not so lucky.
In retaliation for helping the Allied troops on the doomed mission, the locals were cleared out and their homes destroyed.
It took Geoff five years to summon the courage to return to Arnhem, in 1950. It was the first time he got to see the famous Bridge Too Far.
He said: “We weren’t sure what sort of reception we would get because we dropped out of the sky and the place was wrecked within a week.
“We failed, and they paid a heavy price for us trying to liberate them, but they’re still greeting us now and thanking us, after all this time.”
Father-of-two Geoff, who became a painter and decorator after the war, has returned to Arnhem most years since and, in 1984, he finally met the pregnant woman from the aid post with her now 40-year-old daughter.
Each year, Geoff also visits the graves of Leonard and Robert.
Yesterday, he laid a wreath at the Glider Pilots’ memorial at Wolfheze, just yards from where he landed in 1944.
Later, after laying crosses on the graves of his fallen friends, he handed out cards and badges to local schoolchildren.
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Like all primary pupils in Holland, they look after the graves of British soldiers who died for their country.
In a poignant exchange, Emily Bergman, 11, told Geoff: “Thank you for what you did for us, we love you.”
Historic battle on screen
THE brutal Battle of Arnhem was the subject of Richard Attenborough’s film A Bridge Too Far, starring Sean Connery Michael Caine and Anthony Hopkins.
Three months after the success of D-Day in June 1944, General Bernard Montgomery gave the go-ahead for the biggest airborne invasion the world had ever seen.
Operation Market Garden was ambitious, but the lightly armed British 1st Airborne Division – given the job of taking the bridge at Arnhem – found themselves out- numbered and outgunned.
They then ran into Hitler’s crack 10th Panzer Division.
With reinforcements delayed and supply lines cut off, the Paras and glider troops fought bravely for nine days from September 17 to 25 suffering heavy casualties.
After the battle, 2,100 troops from the 1st Airborne were ferried back across the Rhine. Another 7,500 were killed or captured as PoWs.
The 1977 movie is a poignant reminder of the courage and sacrifice of the men who fought so bravely 80 years ago.
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