Al Murray is a highly successful English stand up comedian who created the comic character The Pub Landlord, a bombastic opinionated oaf whose message is ‘England is the best, all foreigners are rubbish’. Of course it is satire, with laughter the best form of criticism. But the real Al Murray was head boy at a leading public school and a graduate of Oxford University, his father a lieutenant colonel in a parachute Royal Engineers unit. His passion is military history and his recent book Arnhem: Black Tuesday, about the battle at Arnhem in Holland in 1944, examines the bleakest day in that epic defeat of Britain’s elite airborne forces.
His book was praised in a review in The Times by Professor Gerard De Gruyt of St Andrews University and endorsed by James Holland and Saul David, two of our top military authors.
Arnhem was a bold plan and a gamble to capture a vital bridge across the River Rhine into Germany that was hoped would shorten the war. Troops were to be landed behind enemy lines by parachute and by glider. Of necessity they were lightly equipped with no tanks or heavy artillery with minimal supplies of rations, ammunition and medical stores. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The intelligence was faulty. The German opposition was thought to be weak old men and those who were medically unfit. Instead there were battle-hardened Panzer soldiers with tanks and heavy weapons, with no resupply problems. Bad weather prevented the Poles, who had trained in Fife, from taking off on time. General Roy Urquhart (incidentally father-in-law of Menzies Campbell, Lord Pittenweem), went missing for two days when he advanced forward to find out how the battle was going. Most of the radios did not work and he was left in the dark. Surrounded by German patrols he hid for two days in the attic of a Dutch house. His absence left a command vacuum.
Al Murray recounts the personal stories of those who fought. No dry as dust official reports with grand strategy, or lack of it. Casualties were severe. Particularly emphasised are the heroic efforts of the medics, doctors and chaplains. Resupply was supposed to be by air but many of the RAF aircraft were shot down or damaged, and supplies were dropped accidentally on ground now overrun by the Germans. Finally the large British force meant to link up with the Paras was severely delayed on a one track road. Arnhem was a tragedy with heavy casualties, with many prisoners of war and only a fraction of the original force able to escape across the River Rhine to allied lines. The story is well told in the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far, directed by Richard Attenborough.
I declare a personal interest in the story of Arnhem a gamble that did not pay off. My primary school teacher to whom I owe so much was a glider pilot at Arnhem. And in 1985 I visited the battlefield with men of 45 Commando Royal Marines when we were on exercise with the Dutch Marines. We went round the War Graves in silence; many of the Marines were veterans of the Falklands War only three years before. They understood.
The best war books and films show the sorrow and the pity of war as well as the heroism and unselfish camaraderie. Al Murray’s book does just this.
[The library has A Bridge Too Far (DVD) as well as a copy of Arnhem: Black Tuesday.]
