Relief

I am very relieved to have finished this book - it was very slow going at times. My beloved godfather was involved in this horrific battle ; he was a glider pilot, wounded (shot in the knee by a sniper) and eventually handed over to the Germans as a prisoner in order to get medical care. He never talked about it (obvs). What little I knew was via my mother. Until I read this book I had no idea of the full horror - the vicious, close-quarter street fighting, the grenades thrown in to cellars full of civilians and wounded. Read more like a description of present-day hostilities in somewhere like Idlib rather than my notion of 'world war' fighting. Kept wondering as I was reading which corner of this particular hell Allan was involved in. Oosterbeek, I suspect. Don't even get me started on the incompetence and hubris of people like Montgomery.

No wonder Allan never spoke about it.