Arnhem Lift

Re-published with seven new chapters that tell the story from both sides, this is an account of airborne action at Arnhem. The airborne troops who landed at Arnhem in September 1944 suffered appalling casualties in the course of the nine-day battle. Of some 10,000 men who went into action, 1400 were killed and more than 6000 - about a third of them wounded - were captured. British accounts have almost invariably praised the Germans' humane treatment of these prisoners, but had the young Sergeant "Lewis Haig" of the elite Glider Pilot Regiment been captured, his fate would have been different, for "Haig" (Louis Hagen) was of Jewish extraction. He was one of the few who got back, and in 1945 he anonymously published his personal account of the battle. It became a bestseller and was translated into six languages. In 1989 Hagen's interest in the battle was rekindled when he met a former German officer who had fought in it. Consequently this new edition of the book includes the German side of the story.