WW2 evening 2025 - Presentation about Frederick Rudd - Operation Market Garden

Juliette Bird presented the following talk, with slides:

• Talk about Frederick Rudd – a soldier in WW2 – who took part in Operation Market Garden in 1944 in Arnhem, Holland.
• You may already know some of stories around this famous failure of the Allied forces, as it was immortalised in the 1977 film ‘A Bridge Too Far’

• Frederick Rudd, was born in Liverpool in 1923
• Dicky, as he was more commonly known, began his war by getting his call-up papers on his 19^th birthday in August 1942

• He started in the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, which filled his parents with horror, they being a proud Lancastrian family! – the war of the roses seemingly alive and well! After six weeks basic training, he was transferred to the Royal Artillery and became a ‘gunner’.
• He learned how to drive and became a driver-signaller, but was still considered too young and inexperienced for an active unit, so he held a couple of positions in the UK before his unit was sent to reinforce the First Army in North Africa and then Italy in 1943.
• In Autumn 1943, he responded to a request for volunteers for the 1^st Airlanding Regiment RA, part of the 1^st Airborne Division.
• He was allocated to a gun troop observation post or OP, responsible for driving a jeep to a spot as close as possible to the OP without attracting enemy attention, then to make contact with the guns by wireless or telephone, select targets and send firing instructions back to the guns.
• In September 1944, back in Britain, he and his fellow soldiers were preparing for the next assault, which would involve glider planes landing in, and parachute drops over, the Dutch countryside.

• For context, the tide of the WW2 was turning and the Allied forces had Germany on the retreat
• For Operation Market Garden, the armies from Britain, the USA and Poland were marching or being flown into the Lower Rhine river region of Europe to continue trying to push back the German forces, by creating a bridgehead over the river to allow the Allied forces to invade northern Germany.
• The ‘Market’ part of the operation referred to a plan for airborne forces to seize nine bridges over the river Rhine, swiftly followed by land forces marching over the bridges towards Germany - the ‘Garden’ part of the operation.
• Dicky arrived at Manston Airfield near Ramsgate in Kent, on 17 September 1944 and proceeded to help load a glider with a jeep, guns and ammunition. They were to take off on Monday 18^th as part of the ‘second lift’
• He recalls that the operational briefing indicated that they would be in Germany for Christmas, so Dicky decided to add 50-odd sheets of music under the driver’s seat as he was ‘sure he’d find a piano somewhere in the Reich!’
• The next job was to name the glider. With the head of his Troop, Captain Taylor nicknamed Buck, they decided to call the glider ‘Buck’s Bastards’ which was written large on the side, in chalk.
• Eventually, their glider was towed through the skies across to the continent. They were shot at and an alarmed Dicky saw holes appear in the fuselage. But they were luckier than the glider adjacent which caught fire.
• Then the tow was jettisoned and he felt the airspeed drop. Thrown into a 45 degree dive to avoid stalling, they landed, with a few bumps in Holland – at Landing Zone Z

• Dicky’s first job was to take an axe and hack off the bolts holding the tail section of the glider from the main fuselage. Seconds later, the jeeps, guns and ammo were out of the glider and heading to the hedge surrounding the landing zone.
• They could hear small arms fire nearby as they joined a stream of jeeps heading down a dirt track. They passed a local who shouted “you’re English aren’t you? I can tell by your smell!”
• Further on many Dutch people lined the route cheering and showering the troops with flowers and apples – a scene depicted in the film ‘A Bridge Too Far’
• One of their first assignments was to head east of the landing zone towards Arnhem, first by jeep and then on foot. They passed wrecked vehicles and dead Germans along the way. But panic soon set in as they heard German tanks. They found shelter by the St Elizabeth Hospital, but it was shortlived. A Dutch doctor appeared relaying a message from a German tank commander, who advised the British troops to ‘leave within two minutes or he would fire on the hospital!’ The British scattered. This was the closest to the centre of Arnhem itself, that Dicky would get.
• Heading back west to Oosterbeek, Dicky reports he was happy to find a Bren machine gun that was unfortunately no longer of any use to its previous owner.
• He recalls looking on helplessly as Allied planes dropped much needed supplies into a landing zone that was now unexpectedly in German hands, despite the forces on the ground having laid out the necessary yellow ID triangles to try and alert the friendly planes of this fact.
• In a built up area of Oosterbeek, they experienced general confusion as Allied and German troops engaged. They spotted a couple of German Stuka planes joining in from above and Buck asked Dicky to fire the Bren gun, joking that he hoped that he hoped there was not too much tracer from the gun as he didn’t want the Stukas to spot his troop specifically, and vent their spite! However Dicky reports that the gun was defective, only firing single-rounds! He threw it away in disgust.
• Dicky was commanded to take his jeep, now loaded with a bale of medical supplies, ¼ mile away, to the church being used as a station for the wounded. As the bales were clearly marked with red crosses, he felt quite safe in this journey. But for his return journey he no longer had any red crosses to protect him! He recalls driving back in a contorted state with one hand on the accelerator, the other on the wheel, a knee on the clutch and his head peering round the side of the dashboard. His windscreen was shot, so perhaps this method of driving was wise.
• Sometime later, Dicky was told that a cup of tea was available in the cellar of a large house. Upon entering, he saw a grand piano and couldn’t resist the temptation to play on his first grand. He sat and played Glen Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ and was halfway through when, with an almighty crash, the side of the house was destroyed. Dicky joked that obviously the German taste in music was somewhat different to his, so he abandoned the piano in favour of the tea!
• Dicky’s next memories are of being in various slit trenches carrying out OP duties as they awaited the arrival of XXX Corps, who were supposed to be arriving across land in the ‘Garden’ part of the operation. However, unbeknownst to Dicky and the Arnhem based troops, they were late, owing to the airborne forces failure to capture a bridge in neighbouring town Nijmegen, which blocked XXX corps’ route - plus the failure of Allied intelligence to spot that the II SS panzer tank corps was in the area.

• Ultimately, for the forces near Arnhem, this meant that they were slowly being pushed into a horseshoe shaped enclave near Oosterbeek, trapped by the Germans on three sides and the Rhine river to the south.
• In one trench near the famous Hartenstein Hotel, Dicky felt the noise of battle quieten somewhat. Then the quiet was broken when they heard a popular British tune being played over a speaker, followed by a German voice telling them they were in a hopeless position and should surrender immediately. Then the Germans renewed their mortar fire with even greater intensity.
• It was at this point that a mortar-hit threw Dicky to the ground, and he felt a searing pain in his right arm. After being patched up, the troop were off to the next gun position in the jeep. Buck advised they drive like the devil and stop for nothing and gave Dicky his revolver with instructions to shoot at anything that moved. Dicky recalls being glad he was not tested on this because he hated to think what would have happened if he tried to shoot accurately with his left hand!

• They reached the gun position and found it deserted. Buck decided to drive off to find out more and advised Dicky to drop into a slit trench, which he did and promptly fell asleep properly for the first time in a week. He didn’t know it at the time, but that was to be the last time he would see Captain Buck Taylor – who died a short while later.
• Dicky awoke to find himself in about four inches of water and the only sound a tank engine. He then became aware that the tank was slowly filling in the trenches around him, but there was another sudden flash that blinded and deafened him and he remembered no more.
• Unaware how long he remained unconscious, Dicky awoke to daylight, covered in mud. He staggered out of the trench which was now more a large hole in the ground, tripped over some white tape, then saw a couple of friendly men beckoning him to a nearby building.
• These men told Dicky that the white tape he’d seen was in fact a guide for Allied troops to follow, leading them through the horseshoe area to the river, in an attempt to withdraw.
• Dicky’s new friends had been making their way to the river too, and took temporary shelter in the building, before discovering it was right in the centre of a German tank park. They and Dicky were deciding what on earth to do next, when the decision was taken out of their hands. A German soldier decided to investigate, and … caught them.

• It was Friday 29 September, 11 days after Dicky had landed in Holland.
• Dicky and his fellow captives were marched 20 odd miles from Oosterbeek to Apeldoorn and from there they were transported by train to Stalag XIB at Bad Fallingbostel in Germany – a POW camp. After a few days, Dicky was sent to a lead ore mine in Bad Grund, in the Harz mountains. But his experiences there are another story…

• He remained in Bad Grund for some 6 months until the Germans began the Long Marches in Spring 1945, moving prisoners out of camps. It was on one of these marches, that Dicky … managed to escape. He eventually met up with some American troops and arrived back in the UK on VE Day, 1945 – as we know – just over 80 years ago.

• After the war was over, in 1946, he married Joan Kathleen Clark and they settled in Liverpool first, where they began their family before moving to London for Dicky’s work, and then they moved here - to Brentwood.

• They had five children in total, ten grandchildren and five great grandchildren – so far and they are all in awe of Dicky’s experiences, in his war.

• Dicky’s full name was Frederick Rudd Bird, and I am his firstborn grandchild, Juliette Bir
• Would any of those who are here tonight, who also related to Dicky Bird please stand up?

• I’ll leave you with this famous quote about Arnhem from war correspondent, Alan Wood:
  • If in the years to come, you meet a man who says ‘I was at Arnhem’ , raise your hat and buy him a drink.
  • Cheers to that.