256105 Pte. John McHale British Army 2nd Btn. Parachute Regiment This is the story as told by my father, John McHale, shortly before his death in 1984.
He was a Red Beret, who had parachuted into Arnhem in September 1944. He was a trained sniper, and carried a special rifle for which he said he would have been shot immediately by the Germans had they found him with it.
My father reported that once on the ground there was no form of communication and as the paratroopers did not all land in the same place, he did not know where his unit was or where to go.
There were more Germans than expected. He recalled crawling in the gutters of the roads at night to try to avoid detection. He told how he had been given shelter by residents of the town, and spent some days in the loft where he sat on a tin bucket as the Germans, in checking the houses, would fire machine guns through the ceiling into the loft. He survived this, but decided that he needed to leave as he was putting the lives of the family in danger.
Upon leaving the house, he was coming down the stairs as a young German started to come up. My father said that there was a split second when their eyes met and both men would much rather have just passed on the stairs with a nod. However, it was down to who could shoot first, and my father killed the German before running out of the house.
He was captured in Arnhem and taken to Stalag XIIA in Limburg where he remained until the end of the war. He reported the conditions to be appalling, and as he was Scottish, he was treated worse than the English soldiers being the last to get food, and very little of it. This was all he ever said about his war time experiences.
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