I was lucky enough to meet Vince in 2007 after Pathfinder had dropped at Ginkel Heath. He was an absolute gent and I was honoured that he took the time to sign my logbook and have a chat with me about some of his experiences.

    He talked about the pals he had lost and having picked up on my accent he told me how the Irish lads he'd served with always had a joke to tell no matter how bad things got.

    I had hoped to meet him again last September while Pathfinder were jumping at Arnhem but when we were out there I found out that he had passed away in May.

    A year after I had met him I came across a poem that he had written as a dedication to the friends that didn't come home. In memory of Vince I've included his poem below. I've also included the text of an article that appeared in the Yorkshire Post in 2004 about Vince.

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REQUIEM FOR AN ARNHEM BOY

My jumps are done for I am dead
My time on earth is done
But in a hundred years from now
I'll still be twenty one.

My brief sweet life is over
My eyes no longer see.
No summer walks, no Christmas trees
No pretty girls for me.

I've got the chop, I've had it
My day jumps are done
But a hundred years from now
I'll still be twenty one.

My wife said see you jack
She will grow old as time goes on
But in a hundred years from now
I'll still be twenty one.

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Old soldier's legacy of the day they took a 'Bridge too far'

Day of memories: Vince Goodwin at Arnhem.


Published Date: 18 September 2004

Andrew Vine Chief Reporter

    VINCE Goodwin goes into hospital next week to have three pieces of shrapnel removed from his stomach – 60 years after he was wounded at Arnhem.

    They have waited since 1944 to start troubling him, but for Mr Goodwin they are an intensely personal reminder of a battle he can never forget – and of the fallen friends he has returned to salute.

    "They thought it was an ulcer, but then the doctor says 'It's shrapnel', and I said 'I know where that's from'," said Mr Goodwin, 80, from Middlesbrough. "It's funny that it's taken all this time to surface. Strange really."

    The shrapnel is the legacy of the last savage day of fighting for the "bridge too far".

    Among the estimated 700 Arnhem veterans in Holland to commemorate the 60th anniversary, Mr Goodwin is one of the few left who actually made it on to the bridge. The British sent 10,000 men to Arnhem, with the order to take the bridge and hold it for two – or in the most extreme circumstances, three – days before tanks arrived to relieve them.

    Only 740 men got there, but they held the bridge for four days in the teeth of overwhelming odds, in one of the bravest actions in military history. Mr Goodwin, of 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment, was one of the 700 who did what 10,000 were supposed to do.

    And as he returned to the city in time for the 60th anniversary of the battle yesterday, the memories were especially vivid.

    "We marched eight miles from Ginkel Heath, where we landed, and we managed to get into Arnhem on the bottom road near the river," he said.

    "It was clear soon enough that a lot of the other lads weren't going to get through. The radios weren't working, and there were all sorts of problems.

    "When we'd been on the bridge 20 minutes, we saw the German half-tracks coming across, and we knocked hell out of them.

    "But we only had food for two days and ammo for two, because the powers-that-be thought that that's how long we'd be here.

    "Luckily, we'd learned the equipment that the Germans used, so we threw our weapons away and used theirs."

    The fighting at the bridge lasted from the Sunday, when the first British troops arrived, until the following Thursday.

    "You were too busy to be scared, because there was a lot of hand-to-hand fighting," said Mr Goodwin. "I was one of the lucky ones who survived it."

    But on the last day of the battle, Mr Goodwin's luck ran out and he was shot in the stomach. Wounded and a prisoner, Mr Goodwin was taken to Eusebius Church, in Arnhem's market place. He went back there yesterday and remembered how it was there that he thought he would die. 

    "This young SS officer said 'Come outside' and when we did, facing us were three of our own captured Bren guns. They were going to shoot us. So we shook hands, and then this very tall German officer came up and slapped the SS man across the face, and took us back inside and gave us half a block of cheese."

    He has returned four times to Arnhem since then, and each visit brings painful memories.

    "When I go to the cemetery, I shall cry," said Mr Goodwin. "In there are six of my dear friends, and I shall go and tap each of their graves. There were twins, and one of them got killed by the beginning of a machine-gun burst and the other got killed by the end of it. Neither knew the other had gone."

    "We were a very close-knit company, and to see them obliterated was heartbreaking, and that's why I come back. To remember them."