The sergeant was Norman Swift, who remembered: “We were told to hold our fire until ordered, then hit them with all we’d got. I went into a passageway leading from our rooms where an unmanned window, suitably blocked with furniture, faced the garden. When we received the order to fire I threw a 36 grenade through the window. At least that was my intention. Imagine my horror when the grenade hit the wooden crosspiece of the window, bounced back and landed amongst the piled up furniture! Luckily, I was the only one in the passage, so with a yell of ‘Grenade,’ I dived back into the room. Thank heavens no one was hurt.”

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Regardless of the details of who tossed the first grenade, the results were the same, a major German force was destroyed before it had an opportunity to press an attack against men who had, by this point, been fighting without rest, reinforcement or resupply for days. Even this momentary triumph, however, offered no real respite. Fighting continued throughout September 19. German attempts to eliminate resistance in and around the school once and for all included small-arms fire, mortars, artillery and finally armor.

At about 7 p.m. a German tank approached to within about 30 yards of the schoolhouse and blew away the northeast corner of the structure at the first-floor level, with other shots going right through the building. In spite of this, the defenders held on. In a first-floor room off the landing, about a dozen mattresses had been stacked to give protection from splintered glass. As Padfield remembered: “Suddenly there was an explosion and one of the mattresses was on fire. I went in to pull it off the pile and put it out and was hurled to the doorway by another explosion. What the hell was that? Someone thought it might have been a rifle grenade from a sniper across the road. I crawled back and there was another explosion with the same result. The third time I was lucky and got the fire extinguished.”

Although every German attack had been beaten back, the constant fighting had used up ammunition at a terrible rate. Given the school’s crucial position east of the bridge, however, the men fought on. Sergeant Swift remembered, “armor piercing shells, fired by German tanks, coming straight through the walls of the room and creating so much dust that we thought we had been blinded and the cries of ‘Whoa Mohammed’ growing fewer and fewer as our positions were overrun and fighting fires in the upper part of the school.” It had been three days since the school had been fortified, and the tiny band inside the school had suffered two killed and 24 wounded holding the key position east of the bridge.

The hard-pressed men, however, still clung to hope that XXX Corps would reach them. It was not to be. The British tanks were still trying to make their way through Nijmegen.

On the morning of the 20th the bleary-eyed men could see considerable German activity around a crossroads south of the school building. At about 9, a tank and self-propelled gun began firing on the schoolhouse from only 70 yards away. Armed with nothing more than Bren guns and small arms, the defenders could do little more than watch as the German guns blew away the roof and top story of the school. One shell set the roof ablaze and another explosion injured and stunned Major Lewis and Lieutenant Wright. Padfield remembered: “Joe Simpson and Paddy Neville were killed, the rest of us were OK and moved into the basement. It was becoming obvious that we should have to move out. [Corporal Bill] Twiggy Hazelwood [wounded before] was getting worse by the hour, and sure enough an­other direct hit and the school was well alight.”

The end was now fast approaching. “Preparing to leave the school because the fire had finally won,” Swift recalled, “Captain Mackay told me to gather together any Gammon bombs the lads had left and he and I would try and get the Tiger tank under one of the school walls. To my relief, after collecting together a few bombs in a canvas bucket, when we were going up the main staircase the ceiling of the landing collapsed putting a stop to that idea.”

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