Five Days in Hell
Jack Smyth
Jack Smyth 1956
Jack Smyth has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1956 by William Kimber and Co.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Prologue
So thats where all the nylon goes no wonder we cant get stockings!
The new girl looked with a critical eye at the huge, circular piece of nylon. Her companion, an expert parachute packer in the Womens Auxiliary Air Force, disregarded the remark. Instead, she made the same speech that she made to all recruits:
This is the canopy of a parachute. It is usually made of nylon here she paused to look at the new girl though sometimes of cotton, and is twenty-eight feet in diameter. Youll notice that in the middle is a circular hole, the vent, twenty-two inches in diameter. This vent prevents undue strain on the canopy when it begins to open and reduces oscillation. These rigging-lines attaching the canopy to the harness are twenty-two feet long.
To the parachute harness is attached this bag which is carried on the back. Inside it, the parachute is housed in another bag divided into two compartments. The outside bag remains attached to the harness; the inside is pulled violently from it by this static line, a length of webbing, one end of which is attached strongly to the inner bag. At the other end is this metal D ring which engages a hook attached to the end of the strop.
The strop is also made of webbing and its top end is secured to a strong point inside the aircraft. The length of the static line is twelve feet six inches. The strop has to be long enough to ensure that the parachute is well below the aircraft before it opens and short enough so that the chute is not caught in the slipstream and twisted round the tail-wheel.
The expert packer paused before adding importantly: About twenty-five minutes are needed to inspect and pack a parachute. It must not remain longer than two months in its bag and it must not be used for more than twenty-five descents. Failure of the canopy to open is the rarest cause of such rare accidents. The parachutists rely on us implicitly.
*
Meanwhile, somewhere in England, bemedalled veterans of the British First Airborne Division who had covered themselves with glory in North Africa, in Sicily and in southern Italy and men of the American 82nd and 101st Divisions who had done the same in the Cherbourg Peninsula were wondering when they would don parachutes again. For, between June 6th and September 17th, 1944, no less than sixteen airborne operations in support of the Allied Expeditionary Force had been planned and called off again. Why? Because, in each case, as the paratroopers waited for the word Go on one occasion they had actually emplaned the armies in the field either reached the proposed objective or got so near to it that the airborne forces would have landed on top of them.
By the middle of September, the German armies which, four years and four months before, had blitzkrieged their way across Europe were retreating even more swiftly towards their own country. More than a million men, British and Americans, after bursting from their congested bridgeheads in Normandy, were sweeping in a flood-tide towards the Siegfried Line.
The British Second Army in a fury of controlled vengeance had crossed the Seine, advanced to Brussels and penetrated into Holland. To make this possible, the whole of its transport had been placed at the disposal of its leading Corps. The other Corps, as a result, were almost completely immobile. Consequently, by the time the main body of the Corps reached the Brussels-Antwerp Line, the situation with regard to supply was critical.
But things were even more critical on the German side: Here, there was near-panic. No organised resistance beyond the Seine had been possible, and the remnants of the German 15th Army, which had been allotted the task of defending the Channel coast, were faced with two alternatives: they could either retreat into the fortified Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk and Ostend and there hold out for as long as possible; or they could try to find a way out into southern Belgium and Holland and make a stand behind three rivers the Meuse which, when it crosses the Dutch frontier, becomes the Maas; the Waal, which is the main branch of the German Rhine; and the Lower Rhine.
If the British 2nd Armys supply difficulties had been overcome, it probably could have pushed through there and then, reached Germany and shortened the course of the war by many months. But its main lines of supply still ran from Cherbourg and the artificial port of Arromanches; although stocks of all sorts were piled up at these ports, road and rail communications between them and the front a distance of 250 miles were not equal to the task of supplying large forces still on the move and making heavy demands on stores of every kind.
The Germans thus found a breathing-space and they made full use of it. As the days slipped by, they consolidated their defences. The most important section was that covered by the three rivers; behind them was a mere skeleton, for the Siegfried Line petered out in the neighbourhood of the Reichswald.
Between the end of this forest and the Waal at Nijmegen runs a ridge, which, although it is only 633 feet at its highest point above sea-level, constitutes the only range of hills in Holland. For many years, this ridge was a favourite exercise ground for the Dutch Army; the canal connecting the Maas with the Waal, and the Maas itself running, respectively, along the western and southern sides of the hill, make it an ideal defensive position.
The Germans were quick to reinforce its natural strength by every possible means. They obviously feared an attack by airborne troops and, during the first fortnight of September, they made great preparations to meet it. More and more anti-aircraft guns were brought up, and reconnaissance photographs showed each day some new position where work on digging them in had begun. Agents reported, too, that Dutch civilians including twelve-year-old children were being pressed into service to prepare a main defence line running along the Waal to the sea and a forward line following the Maas.
Field-Marshal Montgomery, like the Germans, was faced with two alternatives: Either he could remain where he was, content with an advance which in less than a month had brought him to the threshold of Germany; or he could, by crossing three river barriers in quick succession, seek to snatch the victors final crown. He made the second and bolder decision, and he chose to help him as many airborne troops as could be assembled in time. To them he entrusted the stupendous task of forming a corridor, the axis of which would be the EindhovenVeghelGraveNijmegenArnhem road. This would ensure a straight and swift advance to Germanys back-door but only if the nine-span steel bridge at Grave, that crossing the Maas-Waal Canal west of Nijmegen, the great single-span steel bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen, and the bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem were seized and held.
The American 101st Division was to create that part of the corridor from Eindhoven to the outskirts of Grave; the American 82nd Division was to establish its central section from Grave to Nijmegen and capture the high ground south of Nijmegen overlooking the exits from the Reichswald; while the British First Airborne Division was to seize and hold the road bridge at Arnhem. In short, these three divisions were to lay down a carpet of airborne troops over which the 2nd Army would travel to break down the last barriers defending the Reich and gain direct access to the Ruhr.
