THEIRS IS THE GLORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 454, 5 March 1948, Page 15

THEIRS IS THE GLORY

(Rank) IHIS is the toy of the Battle of Arnhem-the~ desperate attempt of the British Ist Airborne Division in September, 1944, to seize and hold the northernmost of the lower Rhine bridgeheads for the advancing Second Army. Re-enacted by the survivors in the ruins ‘of Arnhem itself a year after the battle, it is a good report of one of the British Army’s. finest hours. In the course of six long years of war, in which courage was a necessity of survival and valour itself became a commonplace, it is doubtful if any actionsave, perhaps, the defence of Stalingrad -excelled Arnhem in heroic proportions. The film makes frequent reference to the fact that the men of Arnhem were just ordinary men. Physically that was true enough. They had the same hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections and passions; they were subject to the same diseases, healed by the same meansand hurt by the samie weapons-as millions of other men who came before and after them. But to say that they were ordinary men is carrying Anglo-Saxon understatement too far. They were not even ordinary soldiers in their selection and training, and the qualities of sus- tained courage and endurance which they showed in that one great action were superhuman. And, indeed, it.is in the portrayal of these qualities of endurance that the film excels. The conflict around the Arnhem bridge, originally planned as at most a two-day action, ebbed and flowed for no less. than nine days (September 17-25), during which a division of infantrymen faced the concentrated fury of a desperate and skilful enemy. One by one, as the record graphically shows, the light anti-tank guns were knocked out and the attackers driven back from their objective: Bad weather at first prevented the R.A.F. from dropping supplies and reinforcements, and by the time the weather improved the dropping areas had come under German fire. In the civilian hospital at Arnhem, and in the cellars of friendly Dutch homes, the stream of gravely wounded men swelled hour by hour. The fit and the lightly wounded fought on outside from slit-trenches or the more dubious security of shattered houses-Sten carbines and Piats against 88 mm. guns and Tiger tanks. By the ninth day, the advance guard of the Second Army had fought through to the west bank of the river Lek, but the Arnhem bridgehead had been lost and the survivors of the 1st Airborne Division were ordered to retire. In a masterly night withdrawal which might have come straight from the training manuals (white tapes and all), two thousand reached the British front line, most of them ferried across the river by engineers and American paratroopers. Behind them they left six thousand of their comrades. It was a tactical defeat, but spiritually defeat was swallowed up in victory. Fine as this reconstruction of a gallant action is, however, it left me unsatisfied, and though at times I was deeply moved

Nene ee renee ets eee Ss I was troubled by the feeling that I had not been stirred as profoundly as I should. There were, I think, three possible reasons for this. First, the picture of the battle is a confused one. It appears as a succession of bitter and bloody encounters between small groups -and of course, that is just how most battles appear to those who see them from ground level. But some higher vantage point is necessary if the noncombatant is to get the general action into perspective. Desert Victory and The True Glory were in this respect better edited and presented. In the second place, the enemy against whom the men of Arnhem fought so long and so tenaciously is seen only in the form of tanks and artillery. A solitary sentry and a couple of tiny figures in the distance are the only Germans I can remember seeing in the entire film. But I fear that it was for a more subtle (and illogical) reason that I was left unsatisfied. Had this been the story of Servia Pass, of Crete, of Bel Hamed, or of Sidi Rezegh it would, I think, have aroused in me the exultation and the anguish that such hopeless gallantry deserves. But the story of Arnhem belongs to the people of Britain. However much we might like to share in it, theirs and not ours is the glory.