John O'Keeffe thanks me for telling how I hurt Brian Urquhart in order to serve Marty Peretz's magazine's anti-U.N. agenda and my own career some years ago. O'Keeffe actually read the original story, and he remembers Urquhart's heroism in World War 2:
The Brits went into Arnhem with 10,000 men and came out with 1800. The Poles lost 60% dead in the operation.
Sosabowski ordered the Jews in his 1000 para brigade to wear Christian dog tags before the jump.
By the way, the Arnhem debacle is due in no small measure to the lack of transport aircraft–the Brits could not drop enough paratroopers in on day 1 to consolidate the drop zones or seize the bridges. Soon the Germans would over run them.
Have you seen that movie? Do you remember the Polish general Sosabowski played by Gene Hackman? After the war, pensionless, he worked in a factory and repaired shoes! His son blinded in the rebellion against the Germans was allowed to emigrate to England where he resumed his med practice and took up archery!!!! See the family website.
Imagine what winter was like for the paras taken prisoner. The cruelty of war touched so many people. If
Urquhart had been listened to then the Dutch might have been
spared the terrible battle and the brutal winter of 1944. Among those affected was Audrey Hepburn. Raised a Christian Scientist in Arnhem, she would subsist on tulip bulbs the following winter–which was rumored to have contributed to an eating disorder.
