JOHN Wilde was seconds away from rushing headfirst into what his friends thought would be a hail of bullets, when he was pulled back and stopped by a pal.

Mr Wilde and his comrades in the South Staffordshire Regiment were surrounded. They’d become trapped in a museum after fighting their way through German forces to relieve paratroopers who had taken one side of Pegasus Bridge, during the Battle of Arnhem.

After hours of hard fighting, Mr Wilde and his pals were ordered to surrender by their superior officers, with no other alternative available to the surrounded company.

Mr Wilde, now aged 82, said: “Sergeant Howes gathered us round him and said, ‘Let’s make a break for it’. He went out and I was just about to follow him, when my mate pulled me back and said, ‘Don’t go’.

“After we had surrendered, when we went out, there was a dead body there. For years I thought it was Sergeant Howes, but it turned out he had managed to get away. I met him, years later, but he has died since then.”

Mr Wilde had joined up in 1943 and his first experience of combat came during Operation Market Garden at Arnhem. This was General Bernard Montgomery’s risky plan to end the war by Christmas, by opening up a path into Germany, taking eight bridges spanning the canal and river network from Holland.

Mr Wilde said: “Speaking from my own experience, I wasn’t really concerned, I had no ties or anything, hadn’t even got a girlfriend, so (the thought of being killed) didn’t bother me. Then the Arnhem hop came along and off we went.

“I don’t know how I wasn’t killed actually, because as I moved into Arnhem, they must have had set lines on the road, and right down the middle of the road there were mortar bombs.

“There were three explosions no further than 10 yards away, and I hit the deck and I don’t think I moved again. I think everybody lay still for a while and then a sergeant said, ‘Move, move, move’, and of course we had to move. All the time we were under fire.

“We were supposed to be doing one job, but we were diverted to help the paratroopers. They were under a lot of pressure.

“We fought our way in and we got close to the bridge, but the Germans were waiting for us, with heavy tanks.

“They got us cornered in a museum, which had been code-named ‘The Monastery’. That’s where they surrounded us. They pounded us and we lost a lot of men.

“I went into the museum and I couldn’t believe it. There were men lying all around the place, wounded. One of them I new, his name was Spooney from Uttoxeter, and he’d been hit in the arm with shrapnel.

“I got in another room and there was a corporal shouting for a sniper, which I was.

“He found me this target and we started firing and I never knew whether I hit any or not, but at least it got them moving, and this went on through the night.

“The Germans were throwing hand grenades in. One of them was coming down the stairs and Sergeant Howes shot him.

“We held out for as long as we could. They were all around us, you could see armoured cars in the street.

“At the time it was a bit panic stations and there were so many wounded people. I don’t think we were scared, there was too much adrenalin. I never thought of surrendering, but the officers decided that was the only thing to do.”

From Arnhem, Mr Wilde was taken to three different prisoner of war camps in Germany, eventually being detained in a work camp, where he and fellow prisoners were given a variety of jobs.

“They treated you reasonably well, as long as you kept yourself to yourself,” he said.

“I was threatened a few times for disobeying orders. One time we were working in Hermann Göring’s factory, unloading some trucks in this yard. A big storm came in and it started raining. I jumped off and took shelter under the truck and the others followed me. One of the Germans picked me as the ring leader, and when we wouldn’t get out, he was going to shoot me. I got back on the truck then.

“I was a prisoner until the end of the war. At the end, we were being moved around Germany. When the fighting became close, we were marched away from it. Eventually, the Americans caught up with us and freed us.”

And Mr Wilde, now a father-of-two with nine grandchildren, had the last laugh over his German captors.

“I was sent back to Germany as part of the occupying army; that was all right,” he said.

Mr Wilde was discharged from the army in 1947. He became an engineer, emigrating to Canada for six years before returning home.

Today, he lives in Alsager with his wife Doreen, aged 75, whom he married in 1953.