Des Page - Glider Pilot

IT WAS a perfect landing. Des Page and Stan Graham brought their Horsa glider down in the middle of a ploughed field near Wolfheze on September 18 1944. They were part of the second lift in the Battle of Arnhem.

The Horsa came under fire right from the word "go". "You train to offload quickly but you never move quite so fast as when someone is shooting at you," said Des, from East Farleigh, near Maidstone.

Their cargo was a Jeep and trailer, a motorbike and three men from the Royal Army Service Corps. The Jeep took them into Wolfheze where they met up with other members of their squadron

It was there they encountered their first dead German. "He was sitting down against a fence with his brains spilling out the back of his helmet," said Des. "I said to Stan: ‘My God if they're all as big as this we've come to the wrong place."

Seeking shelter in a home for blind people, they were amazed when the residents sang the national anthems of both Britain and Holland. "This gave us a dilemma," said Des. "Do we stand to attention or lay flat to avoid German snipers. Being British soldiers we stood of course."

Eventually he and fellow glider pilots found themselves in the gardens of the Dreyeroord Hotel. What became known as the Battle for the White House was about to begin.

"There were 12 glider pilots dug into the gardens of the Hotel facing the woods," he said. "Inside were soldiers of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. I was positioned on a sunken path where I had mounted a Bren gun."

A gun was firing over the heads of the glider pilots, bringing down tree debris onto them.

A soldier close to Des was shot and a medic who came to help was also hit twice in the leg. Snipers had got into the houses across the street.

"Ron Johnson my officer put a PIAT bomb into one of the houses and we rushed across and threw grenades in," said Des. "We moved like lightening. It got rid of the snipers."

Soon afterwards they saw a German half-track with the officer exposed at the turret. Johnson hit him with a revolver shot and the KOSBs finished off the vehicle.

"About mid afternoon - this was on the Wednesday - we saw a German coming through to attack," said Des. "It was just like in a picture book. The sun was reflected on the eagle on his helmet.

"Tommy Snell, the bloke with me, said: ‘Let me have him'. A burst of fire was put into him and down he went.

"Then all hell broke loose. They were coming through the woods at us. The piece of ground in front of us became a killing ground. The glider pilots were firing from their trenches, I was firing the Bren gun and the KOSBs were firing from the hotel."

Des began to run short of ammunition and dashed into the hotel where he managed to pick up some bandoliers of 303. From a window he saw a German soldier preparing to launch a stick-grenade and shot him with his Sten gun.

Meanwhile a German tank arrived firing its big 88 mm gun bringing down a tree. It was time for the glider pilots to pull back so they used the tree as their second line of defence.

Des found himself in a trench near a small barn. Now he had a real problem. The trench already had an inhabitant - a frog. "I've got a lifelong horror of frogs," he said. "If the Germans had come across with a bucket of frogs I'd have given in."

Next the Germans set light to the barn with tracer and he forgot about the frog. "It was getting pretty hot with flames roaring at the back of my neck," he said. "There was a cow or something in that barn. One of the blokes managed to get the door open and it escaped."

Then came a problem they didn't need. A Dutch girl, aged about 21, decided to make a run for it from one of the houses opposite. She was shot in the foot. Ron Johnson ran out and picked her up, dropping her in Des's trench. 

He put a shot of morphine into her and with a stretcher-bearer, helped carry her to a dressing station. A burst of machine gun fire ripped under the stretcher, but missed all three.

"When we got to the dressing station, the whole place was squelching with blood," he said.

On the Friday the KOSBs began pulling out and the glider pilots had to follow. After a few more days skirmishing it was decided to get out altogether. This involved a nightmare crossing of the Rhine near Oosterbeck during which Des fell from the boat two thirds of the way across.

"I'm a pretty good swimmer," he said. "Also I was wearing a ladies fur coat under my smock which I had pinched to keep me warm at night. I think that gave me buoyancy." Safe on the far bank he was given a dish of tinned stew, the first meal he'd had for days.

Before returning to England, the glider pilots were told they would never have to go into action again.

But a few months later Des was again piloting a Horsa glider in Operation Varsity to secure the Rhine crossings. 

"We were flying at 2,500 feet and it was like flying into hell," he said. "Monty had ordered a blackened smoke screen and we were just above it. 

"We had 26 men in the back and our objective was to take this bridge over the Weser Canal. There were two gliders ahead of us. The first was blown to bits. Number two lost its port wing. 

"We decided to turn right instead of left as instructed and we went in at colossal speed. A tree embedded itself into one of the wings and we stopped.

"Then we went for the bridge and took it without much opposition.

"It was a huge operation involving three divisions. You're talking about five thousand paratroops and 1,350 gliders coming in.

"We must have looked bloody awesome. The Germans had no stomach for that."