Seventy years ago this month there must have been great excitement as about 250 men suddenly arrived in Spalding, living in accommodation huts on the Grammar School field, the Odeon Cinema and elsewhere.
Nine months later, the men – members of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment – disappeared again just as suddenly when they went to one of the famous engagements of the Second World War, the Battle of Arnhem, as part of the British First Airborne Division.
During those months in Spalding the men were busy training in weaponry, first aid, field craft and general fitness because, as chairman of Spalding branch of the Parachute Regimental Association David Allmond says, they were extremely fit, lightly armed and used to fighting in isolation without heavy weapons.
The men clearly had time for socialising though, because a number of them left girlfriends and even wives behind in Spalding when they went to fight in the Netherlands in September 1944.
Tragically, Major Allmond describes the battle as “devastating”, as of the 12,000 or so men who went out, only 2,000 came back – the majority died. Those taken as prisoners of war returned in 1945.
Of those who returned, there is only one man left in Spalding – 91-year-old Gordon Harding, better known as Curly. He is a member of a select band: Major Allmond says there are probably only six or seven members of the 3rd Parachute Regiment still alive in the world.
Curly’s memories of those distant days are now hazy, but his experiences at Arnhem are still distressing. Major Allmond, asked how anyone deals with witnessing the death of friends and colleagues, says: “You look, but you don’t see.”
Curly recalls camping on the Grammar School field in wooden huts, going on runs around the area to keep fit as well as boxing in the Corn Exchange and the Drill Hall.
He says: “We met several young ladies, mostly in the town centre, but we went to dances in the Corn Exchange and the same band leader, Don Luck, came regularly.”
Curly quick stepped a local girl to the altar soon after the war but, unsurprisingly, that marriage foundered, and a second wife died before Curly married Elsie, who also died in 1998.
Curly says the men realised they were approaching the time they would be parachuted into the fighting zone.
He said: “Some were a bit frightened, we all were really until it happened and then you were alright once it started. We lost a lot of good mates. That’s the problem. The Polish airborne lost all their men, or a tremendous amount.”
Major Allmond explains that Curly was able to avoid capture, although it was three weeks after the battle had finished before he and two men from the 9th Battalion were able to get assistance from the Dutch resistance, who gave them shelter and got them to the Allied lines.
There was great secrecy surrounding the 3rd Parachute Regiment’s presence in the town, but by late September and early October, these newspapers were filled with reports of men who had fallen at Arnhem as well as tributes to the “gallant warriors” who made it safely home to Spalding.