Nine days that will haunt Ron forever

Now, at 90, he is back at the historic battlefield -- the last time veterans have been officially invited to commemorate the battle.

He relates his memories to Frank Elson.

The return to Arnhem

IT is the odd, almost funny, things that stick in Ron Ashmore's mind.

As part of the group of Airborne troops held up a few miles from Arnhem itself, Ron had to dig in near to what he remembers as being a nice house.

"I asked the elderly lady who lived there if I could borrow her spade and she let me have it, but asked us to be careful of her vegetables -- well they had nothing to eat, did they?

"Anyway, the next day after a German bombardment she didn't have a house left.

"I know it's not really funny, but we did find a sort of gallows humour in the situation."

Ron, now aged 90 and living back in his native Belmont, was a Sergeant in the... "now get this right young man, the 7th Battalion, Kings Own Scottish Borderers, 1st Airborne Division.

"It's a mouthful, isn't it? I was called up in 1940, spent three months at Lancaster and then went to the 7th Battalion, in the middle of the night somewhere down south. I woke up the next morning on a beach and thought I was among foreigners -- at 25 years of age I was hearing Scottish people talk for the first time in my life!"

Not a paratrooper, Ron was glider-borne.

"We missed D-day because we were training, always training, landing a glider wasn't easy -- we lost more than one in training, and that was with around 25 young men inside."

In fact, on the first day of Operation Market Garden the supposedly difficult landing went well.

"We were a bit scattered but rallied to the sound of the Piper.

"We were the first to land, and our job was to clear the ground for the Paras, otherwise they would just get shot as they floated down.

"Of course it all went wrong because of the Panzers. Just plain bad luck that they were in the area.

"It was an Airborne land with just light weapons, a few mortars, hardly any food or provisions and just enough ammunition that you can carry. Oh, we did have some small handtrucks to pull some ammunition along.

"We had nothing to combat tanks with at all. The idea was to hold the area, get reinforced by the Paras, march to Arnhem and then hang on for the ground troops' breakthrough.

"Of course we ended up fighting from the moment we landed. We fought as far as Oosterbeek. It was dirty house to house fighting and we were held there. We weren't going anywhere, not against tanks.

"That's where I borrowed the spade as we had no equipment for things like trench digging."

Using petrol bombs they had scavenged, mortars and bunches of hand grenades tied together, against the odds the airborne troops did destroy a few tanks. They also repulsed a lot of German infantry attacks.

"We were stuck where we were, in action almost constantly and the clock was ticking.

"There was confusion and some of our lads went a bit strange. You know, they couldn't take it.

"One night someone came up to us talking in a guttural tone. I wouldn't shoot him because we tried not to give our positions away in the dark and I was working on another way of killing him when something he said made me realise it was one of my own lads who had been shot in the throat.

"So then I took him to the first aid station -- I saw things there that I could never tell people about, really bad injuries -- and then I made my way back. Moving across this field some Germans whispered to me to come and give myself up.

"They had to be kidding! I marked their position, got back to my lads and then, at first light we attacked and took them prisoner instead!"

Of course the British troops had no food with them.

"We ate fruit from orchards we were in and dug up turnips and things. I did get a bit miffed when I found the officers sitting in a cellar eating off china plates.

"In the main though the officers were in the same boat as us, stuck and being shot at. A lot.

"Mind you we did a bit of shooting back. I was a Marksman and all I'll say is that I did my bit to even the odds.

"Here's another daft one. Our MO made a deal with the Germans that if we withdrew from the first aid station they would come in and look after our wounded men. The MO had nothing left for them at all.

"So all the able-bodied men withdrew. Then our CO sent me back to see if any of the wounded were good enough to fight. I got there and the MO, waiting for the Germans, blew a fuse. He told me to get back as they would shoot me, being able-bodied.

"I was getting fed up with this tooing and froing. I had to crawl through houses, under cover all the time, and in one of them I spotted all this shaving gear so I thought, nuts to them and stopped and had a shave.

"Funny what you remember. I really don't remember when exactly I was wounded. It was a shell burst and it took away a bit of my knee. You can still feel the hole today.

"Then, another time a bullet shot the tommy gun right out of my hands -- it hit the wooden stock. So I picked up another one and carried on again. We took ammo off the bodies as well. They didn't need it and we did."

Eventually the decision was made to withdraw the troops -- after nine days of heroic fighting it was obvious that neither side was going to win.

"We were told that there would be boats on the river. When we got there I remember thinking that if I couldn't get on a boat I'd swim it.

"The Guards were on the other side. They gave us cigarettes. Then we found a bar and had a few drinks. Then we joined the Americans at the Nijmegen Bridge. From there we went home. At the end of the war we were in Norway rounding up SS and Quislings."

Today Ron is sprightly with twinkling eyes that cloud momentarily as some memories come to him. He does wonder why he came home when so many did not.

"I do wonder why I was spared. I have always tried to be nice to people and even as a sergeant I wasn't one of those who shouted and screamed. I'd ask... and my lads fought and sometimes died because I asked them to. I also went with them most of the time.

"We weren't heroes. We were tough, we were well trained and we did the job they asked us to do and then some. They told us three days, we were there for nine, but heroes? What is a hero anyway?

"I came back home and worked in the bleachworks. The War, Holland, was a very long time ago, but still sometimes, in the night, I think about it."

Operation Market Garden

OPERATION Market Garden was a bold move aimed at ending the Second World War before the end of 1944. In the belief that the Germans were on the point of collapse, the plan was to parachute troops to various parts of Holland to capture five key bridges.

The bridge at Arnhem, was entrusted to the 1st British Airborne Division. Ten thousand men were to be dropped 60 miles into enemy territory, and it would be three days before British tanks reinforced them.

Because of a shortage of planes only half of the 1st Airborne were flown to Arnhem on the first day -- eight miles from the bridge.

After landing on Sunday the 17th, the 2,000 men of the 1st Airborne's 1st Brigade encountered heavy opposition -- by a fluke two SS Panzer Divisions were resting nearby -- and only their 700-strong 2nd Battalion reached it.

For two days the remaining troops tried to fight their way through to Arnhem but losses were so great that on Wednesday the 20th, the decision was made to abandon the bridge, and fortify the remaining 3,500 men of the Division into a defensive perimeter near to the town of Oosterbeek.

Heavy fighting then took place at both Oosterbeek and Arnhem, the Germans equipped with heavy weapons, artillery and tanks against th e British armed with only light weapons

Of the approximate 10,600 men who had fought at Arnhem and Oosterbeek, only 2,398 returned, with 1,500 killed and the remainder captured.