Dakotas at Arnhem

During WWII, my father was in the army. During the Arnhem campaign of 1944, his unit was assigned to act as crew in a number of supply aircraft - Dakotas - to drop supplies to the Allied troops.

One day over Nijmegen in the Netherlands, their plane was shot down and they were obliged to save themselves by using parachutes; thankfully, they didn't lose anyone when they did this. On landing, they were met by local people who hid them in a barn for several days. Eventually, the locals said it was safe for them to make their way towards the Allied lines, which were then quite close, so the group of soldiers duly set off on foot to make the journey. While crossing a field and with no cover of any kind, they encountered an armoured car - it was covered in dust so its marking were completely hidden and they had no idea whether it was British, American, or German. The soldiers stopped and waited - there was no point in trying to run away, since they would have been shot immediately if the vehicle was hostile. When the armoured car was close to them it stopped, the lid was thrown open and a man stuck his head out and said (in the broadest Glaswegian accent): "her, mate. d'ye see any Germans about here?"

My father and his colleagues joined up with the Allied troops and made their way back to the UK. As this was happening, the War Office listed my father as Missing in Action and sent a letter to his wife (my mother) to tell her this. As luck would have it, the letter arrived at their house the same day he did!