John - Arnhem: The Battle for Survival.

There are many people who willingly gave us their time and expertise while we wrote this book. It is impossible to mention every individual, but we are truly grateful to them all. Our heartfelt thanks also go to:

Major Mike Peters of the Army Air Corps, who sourced countless accounts and pictures and proofread the manuscript.

Mr Jonathan Baker, Curator of Airborne Assault at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. Jon also proofread the manuscript, and he and Becks Skinner provided unstinting assistance during our visits to the museums incredible archive.

Sarah Standeven at OfficeOffice, who transcribed our countless interviews with amazing skill and speed.

Our agent, Mark Lucas, and everyone at Penguin who edits, produces and markets our books.

Mike Collins, National Secretary of the Parachute Regimental Association; Alan Hartley, Chairman of the RAF Down Ampney Association; Lieutenant Colonel David Reynolds, editor of Pegasus magazine; Niall Cherry of the Society of Friends of the Airborne Museum; Mark Hickman, creator of www.pegasusarchive.org; Cathy Pugh of the Second World War Experience Centre; Martin Mace, editor of Britain at War magazine; Air Commodore Graham Pitchfork of the Aircrew Association; and Peter Elliot from the Royal Air Force Museum.

Countless authors and researchers with an unparalleled knowledge of Arnhem contacted us offering their assistance. Again, it is impossible to name them all, but the following went above and beyond in their efforts to help us: Derek Armitage, David Blake, David Brook, Luuk Buist, Tom Buttress, Philip Chinnery, George F. Cholewczynski, Derek Duncan, Bob Gerritsen, Chris Gryzelka, John Howes, Dick Jansen, John Jolly, Gary Jucha, Steve McLoughlin, John OReilly, Mark Pitt, Paul Reed, Mark Roberts, James Semple, Roger Stanton, Graham Stow, Andrzej Szmid, Arie-Jan van Hees and Steve Wright.

Our wives, Suzannah and Sarah, for their unconditional love, support and advice.

Finally, to the many Arnhem veterans and their families who related their personal accounts of the battle, often reliving traumatic events long since buried; we are incredibly grateful. Sadly, we could only use a fraction of the stories we read and heard, but we hope we have done justice to you all.

As Arthur Ayers slipped into a fitful sleep in his army billet in eastern England in September 1944, he tried not to think about tomorrow. Reveille would sound at 5.30 a.m., and then he would be going into action with thousands of other British soldiers of the 1st Airborne Division. Weighed down with weapons and supplies, they would cram into hundreds of planes and gliders already lined up at a dozen airfields, fly 200 miles from the safe shores of England, and land 70 miles behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied northern Europe. Ayers, a sapper, was philosophical about his own survival, as most fighting men are on the eve of battle. If youre going to die, theres nothing you can do about it, he told himself, so theres no point worrying.

Instead, he directed his mind to loving thoughts of Lola. She was his wife of just a few weeks, theirs one of those marry me quick romances that the special circumstances of wartime encouraged. He had spotted the vivacious eighteen-year-old redhead in her smart ATS uniform at the tea bar in a Woolworth store and knew instantly she was the one for him. His mates had gone over to chat while he held back, too shy to speak. But he wrote to her, his first letter a complete shot in the dark he sent it care of that Woolworths tea bar, where a friend of hers was working. Lola got sick a bout of TB Arthur came to her hospital bedside, love blossomed. They didnt wait. In those days, it was important to seize the moment, especially since he knew that, for airborne troops like him, a big military operation was in the offing and had been since D-Day in June. He got special permission from his CO for thewedding and the honeymoon, short and sweet in a bungalow near Brighton. We didnt talk about the possibility of me being killed. We just enjoyed life while we had it. After five days as a husband he was back with his unit and now about to head over the North Sea to the Netherlands.

There was something of that same carpe diem spirit about the ambitious military operation he was embarking on. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the British army commander, had spotted an opportunity to end the war quickly and seized it. Fired up with optimism, he conceived this bold plan to deliver a surprise left hook his phrase by-passing Germanys static defences along the fortified Siegfried Line and punching into the heartland of the Nazi nation. Already on the run, the German army would be sent reeling; resistance would crumble. One big push now and the war Britain had been fighting and its weary citizens enduring since September 1939 could be over in a matter of weeks. A huge air armada had been hurriedly assembled, the biggest of the war, and the objective of the heavily armed strike force it was ferrying into battle was the German-held road bridge over the Rhine at the historic Dutch city ofArnhem, close to the border between the Netherlands and Germany. Win it and hold it until reinforcements arrived en masse over land and they would be striking a massive and decisive blow in the war to defeat Hitler.

Victory was within the Allies grasp, and soon. If all went well, there would be peace at last. Ayers would be reunited with his bride. The last-minute briefing at camp was reassuring. From intelligence reports we have received, his company captain informed the eager young paratroopers lined up in ranks before him, it seems there will be very little opposition at Arnhem, just a German brigade group and a few light tanks. In reality, what lay ahead was one of the toughest and hardest-fought battles of the Second World War. Ayers was one of the lucky ones. He would survive. But it would be a long time before he returned home.

Just hours before Ayers went to war, on a grassy water meadow beside the River Rhine, Anje van Maanen, a teenage Dutch girl from Oosterbeek, a well-to-do village just a few miles west of Arnhem, was playing hockey with her friends. It was the weekend. The day was sunny and warm. They were unaware of the hope and then the horror that were about to descend on them, changing their lives for ever. Finn, Anjes dog, a lively Belgian Shepherd, was on the loose and interrupting their game with his antics. He grabbed the ball and ran off. Seventeen-year-old Anje, the local doctors daughter from the big house just off Oosterbeeks main street, shrieked in irritation and delight as she chased after him, and wrestled the ball from his teeth. She tickled his black ears and stroked his head, and everyone laughed as the game got under way again. Such a nice day friends, fun, fine weather, Finn. For a fewprecious moments you could almost forget about the hated Moffen, the German soldiers who had been holding sway over Holland for four years and four months.

There were constant reminders of the harsh, humiliating realities of being a conquered nation the fact that the hockey game was girls only, for example. Where were the boys? Most of those in their teens and twenties had gone into hiding living underwater, as the flood-prone Dutch put it to avoid being rounded up and transported in cattle trucks to Germany to work in tank and aircraft factories: slave labour to fuel Hitlers increasingly overstretched war machine. Anjes three brothers had disappeared into the ether to avoid being deported. Two had gone away, but my youngest brother Paul, who was a medical student, was hiding in our house, up in a room in the attic. We had to be careful and not talk about him, even to friends. We couldnt really trust other people. Suspicion ruled everyones lives. A whispered wordpraising the Allies, a V-for-victory sign flashed with furtive fingers such acts could be dangerous. Safety, survival even, lay in silence and invisibility.