Arnhem Spearhead

The story of the epic stand of the 1st British Airborne Division at Arnhem has often been told and recently the film A Bridge Too Far has re-awakened public interest in the battle. This remarkable book is the only memoir of Arnhem to have come from the pen of a private soldier. As the author's former CO and one of the heroes of Arnhem, Major-General John Frost, observes in his Foreword: 'It is a most vivid moving personal account which should be of great interest to all kinds of people, for there are few such written by young soldiers either about the last war or any other war for that matter.'

James Sims was only nineteen and had never seen action when, on 17 September 1944, as part of the vanguard of the highly-trained 1st British Airborne Division he was dropped 64 miles behind the German lines outside an obscure Dutch town called Arnhem. His Unit, the 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment, managed to reach its objective, the huge steel bridge which spanned the Lower Rhine, but was soon engaged by powerful German forces, whose presence in the area had been insufficiently appreciated. Cut off from the rest of the Division and from the tanks of the Second Army struggling to break through to them from the south, the men of the 2nd Battalion and elements of other units held the northern end of the bridge for three days and four nights against repeated attacks by German infantry and armour. When the exhausted defenders were finally overwhelmed they had almost no ammunition left and the cellars of the few shattered buildings that they still occupied were overflowing with. wounded, among whom was the author. James Sims describes the ordeal which he and his companions underwent simply, modestly and with-genuine compassion.

The last part of his book is an account of his unique experiences as a prisoner of war in Germany shortly before the collapse of the Third Reich. His lively and absorbing narrative will surely establish itself as a classic of the Second World War.