Captains courageous
From Professor Richard Holmes
Sir: James Delingpole threw me a wonderful bouquet in his first review of the BBC2 series Battlefields, but his tailpiece (Arts, 27 October) has turned laurels to ashes. I did not imply that the Grenadier Guards showed cowardice in not advancing from the road bridge at Nijmegen which they captured on 20 September 1944. The programme let two officers involved, the then captains Burriss (82nd US Airborne Division) and Carrington (Grenadier Guards), put their points of view: these were fundamentally, but wholly reasonably, different. The former had crossed the Waal in an assault boat, losing many of his men in the process, and cleared German defences on the far bank in savage fighting. He believed that he had done so in order to relieve the British parachutists still holding the north end of Arnhem bridge, not far away. and looked to the Grenadiers for assistance. The latter (now Lord Carrington) had advanced to Nijmegen along a fiercely defended narrow road vulnerable to counterattack, and crossed the bridge expecting that it might be blown to pieces as he did so. His regiment had fought its way through the town, was short of infantry to support its tanks, had no idea
what lay ahead, but knew that anti-tank weapons dominated roads across this lowlying terrain. Had the Grenadiers been ordered to push on, they would doubtless have done so, and, given the paucity of opposition at that moment — something they had no way of knowing — might well have succeeded. But Lord Carrington can no more be criticised for not advancing on his own initiative than Capt. Burriss can be blamed for expecting help that was not forthcoming.
I salute the courage of the men who crossed the Waal that day, whether in assault boats or Sherman tanks. Their abundant bravery — like that of the airborne soldiers in and around Arnhem — deserved a plan which was better conceived and more crisply executed; and for this we must look critically, not at two bars or three pips, but at a higher level of command.
Richard Holmes
Alresford, Hampshire
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