Arthur & Douglas

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I've mentioned before at some point my uncle Arthur's involvement in Operation Market Garden in World War Two. He never, ever, talked about anything he did or witnessed then or before, so I've always been in the dark about his experiences at the time. I was rooting around the other day in one of the large boxes of family photographs that we possess, and came across this one, taken in Italy, showing Arthur on the left, his Airborne patch clearly visible on his right arm, and his cousin, Douglas, to his left. I'd heard the family story about how the two of them met by accident on a railway platform at Brindisi: Arthur in the First Airborne and Douglas a Navy boy [his attire in this photograph appears to be a bit non-standard apart from his cap]; having been separated for some time by the war.

Up until now, though, I'd always believed that their meeting was on their way to demob after the war; but this photograph is dated 1943: before Market Garden and well before Armistice. The date gives me a clue as to why and how the two happened to be where they were at that time: Brindisi was occupied by the First Airborne on the eleventh of September 1943, three days after the Italians capitulated. So, Arthur must have been shipped home after campaigning in Italy, only to be flown out the following year in a glider, to be captured at Arnhem in the ill-fated Market Garden op, and end up as a prisoner in a German POW camp. It's no wonder he never talked about his wartime experiences: he must have been through some hellish shit...

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