The company first headed north and then turned right along the railway line into Arnhem. “I proceeded with my company up a side road which led to a railway line as I thought this might not be protected,” Lewis later reported. “At the junction of the track and the railway line, 9 Platoon came under fire from an enemy vehicle, which quickly withdrew. Two more halftracks were ambushed by this platoon and set on fire, and 7 Platoon, under the command of Lieutenant [Peter] Hibburt, attacked a halftrack, which came up from their rear, and set it on fire. The total casualties from these actions were five other ranks [enlisted men]. I believe the only fatal casualty was Sergeant Graham of 9 Platoon.”

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On reaching the railway line, there was a short pause while the company reorganized before moving in the direction of Arnhem, still with 9 Platoon in the lead. At several points along the way, the company encountered German machine guns, firing on fixed lines down the track. Crawling on their bellies part of the way, the men finally arrived at Arnhem station around 10:30 p.m. Major Lewis then marched his company through town to the main square in one body, hoping that in the darkness the Germans would mistake this large group of men for their own troops.

Now 8 Platoon was in the lead, commanded by Lieutenant Gerald Maurice Infield. As it neared the main square, Infield’s platoon ran into some Germans, but Lewis ordered the lieutenant to avoid a confrontation and move with all possible speed to the bridge. Finally the group reached the objective.

Infield was told to take his platoon to an important crossroads just northwest of the bridge, where there appeared to be a school or similar public building. Seven Platoon was instructed to go immediately to the schoolhouse while 9 Platoon temporarily held the north end of the approach road so that all the designated buildings could be fortified. Before 7 Platoon could move up the ramp road, however, it was overrun, and 9 Platoon came under increasingly heavy fire during a series of attacks from the front and both flanks. The platoon made a fighting withdrawal, but only nine men reached the schoolhouse, five of them wounded.

Lewis now joined the remnants of 9 Platoon as they entered the three-story Van Limburg Stirum school building. At the door they were greeted by men from A and B troops, 1st Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers. One of the sappers who let the 3rd Battalion men into the schoolhouse was Arthur Hendy. “I was with Lance Corporal Joe Malley and we let them in the front door, which at that time hardly had any barricades,” Hendy said. “To approach this door you had to walk five or six steps to the lower floor. You then went down again to the side entrance, which was heavily barricaded.”

Hendy and the other engineers had taken their own circuitous route to the school. They had begun the day at the rear of the 2nd Battalion but around 6:30 p.m. had carried out a left-flanking maneuver to act as a guard while dealing with some German opposition at Den Brink. In an hour they were on the move again. After diverting from the column to check on the possible use of a pontoon bridge — for naught, it turned out — the engineers moved on into Arnhem.

The engineers finally neared the road bridge at about 10 p.m. and reached it a half-hour later. Almost as soon as they arrived, engineers from A and B troops made an attempt to take the southern end of the bridge. Armed with a flamethrower, Sapper (private) Ginger Partridge attempted to destroy an enemy pillbox but missed and instead hit a hut next to it that contained fuel and ammunition. The resulting explosion ignited the paint on the bridge, which burned throughout the night and illuminated the area.

After rejoining their comrades, the engineers were ordered to the east side of the bridge to set up a defensive perimeter. As Sergeant Harold Padfield recalled: “We managed to get under the bridge without any bother. We came across a large building which Lieutenant D. [Dennis] Simpson told me to break into and search….I just broke the glass in the door and turned the handle from the inside. I asked Joe Malley and Arthur Hendy to give me cover as I searched around. I went upstairs and realized it was a school; there were desks and chairs and a blackboard and blasted great picture windows on one side of the main classroom and porthole windows on the opposite side, but other rooms weren’t too bad. There was a good view of the bridge from the room at the end of the passage. I went out and reported back and we then took over this building.”

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