CARRINGTON – ONE MAN'S DECISION|ARNHEM
RIGHT
A British DUKW
ferries supplies
and US Airborne
troops across
the Waal, with
Nijmegen bridge
in the distance,
September 30,
1944.BELOW
A 17Pdr gun crew
keeps watch across
the River Waal, 21
September 1944.
TOPFOTOroadblock, recalled encountering far
less willing assistance. All the time
giving good reply to constant enemy
fire, including from a large gun in front
of a church some 300-400 yards ahead,
the tanks met with the paratroops,
he reflected: “Just as I got round the
corner and turned right I saw these
helmets duck in a ditch and run, and
gave them a burst of machine gun
fire. I suddenly
realised they were
Americans [and
stopped firing].
They jumped
out of the ditch;
they kissed the
tank; they kissed
the guns because
they’d lost a lot of
men.”
Robinson recalls
how he told an
American officer:
“I’m sorry. My
orders are to hold
this bridge... if you’d like to give me
ground support for a little while until
we get some more orders then we can
do it.”
“He said he couldn’t do it, so I said
that he had better come back to my
wireless and talk to General Horrocks
... [He] came over and had a pow-wow
with Horrocks. The colonel said ‘Oh
very well’ and I told him where I
wanted the men ... they hadn’t been
there 10 minutes, before they were on
their way again.”
Whatever occurred, other writers
have embellished the story with
inaccurate detail and wild fancifulof the House of Lords, held office in
the governments of six successive
Conservative prime ministers and,
as one of the most distinguished
statesmen of post-war politics, would,
in another age, have been an obvious
candidate for the leadership of the
party. During his political career
Carrington was blamed for many
things, he resigned as foreign secretary
in 1982, three days after Argentina
invaded the Falkland Islands, having
accepted full responsibility as the
minister in charge (and later cleared of
any blame). However, he was not
responsible for a ‘failure at Arnhem’.“Just as I got round
the corner and turned
right I saw these
helmets duck in a
ditch and run, and
gave them a burst of
machine gun fire.”theories of conspiracy, some even
involving the Bilderberg Group –
established in 1954 with its original
aim being to avoid a further world
war – and Pope Pius XII. Due to the
positions held by those involved in
the multi-national Bilderberg Group it
has given rise to many extraordinary
claims, including that Lord Carrington,
given his post-war political career, was
somehow instrumental in halting the
advance of an entire corps to ensure
the future of a Soviet-free Germany.
Peter Carington, Lord Carrington
MC, died on July 9, 2018, aged 99.
He was the longest serving memberhttp://www.britainatwar.com^57
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