The Old Church at Oosterbeek stands close to the Lower Rhine, at the southern edge of the ground the British 1st Airborne Division held in September 1944. It is a working church, plain and low, its brick tower rebuilt after the war. Inside, the pulpit is still there.
The man in the pulpit
On 20 September 1944, Major Richard Lonsdale climbed into that pulpit. He had an arm in a sling, a bandage round his head and another on his leg. Below him sat the men he now commanded. Many were asleep in the pews.
They were the survivors of the failed advance into Arnhem. Elements of the 1st, 3rd and 11th Parachute Battalions, the 2nd South Staffords and a handful of glider pilots, worn down in three days of fighting through the western suburbs and pushed back towards the river. The battalions that had set out to reach the bridge no longer existed as battalions. What remained was a few hundred men holding the southeastern corner of the perimeter.
Why Lonsdale was there
Lonsdale had not planned to be there. His Dakota was hit by flak on the second lift, and he was wounded in the hand before he jumped. He landed, sought treatment, and missed his battalion’s advance into the city. That absence left him alive and able to take command when the men came back.
The speech and after
He spoke to them from the pulpit. He reminded them they had beaten the Germans in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. He told them ammunition was short, so when they fired, they fired to kill. An hour later they were digging in around the church and the houses beside it, in what became the Lonsdale Force sector of the perimeter.
The speech is well known partly because it was recreated for the 1946 film Theirs Is the Glory, made on the ruins with men who had fought there. The exact words vary between accounts. What is not in doubt is the effect. The men held the southern arc of the perimeter until the division was withdrawn across the Rhine on the night of 25 September.
Lonsdale already held the Military Cross from Waziristan and the Distinguished Service Order from Sicily. For Arnhem he received a Bar to his DSO. He survived the war and died in 1988.
The Old Church is a fixed stop on every Arnhem and Oosterbeek tour I run.