Coward at the Bridge

by : James Delingpole, Trapped in a cupboard with a nubile blonde nymphomaniac; crossing the Waal under a hail of fire with the US paratroops of 82nd airborne; rattling in a jeep through the Dutch countryside with the men of 1st Airborne Recce Squadron; crash landing a stricken glider; trying to take out a self-propelled gun with a ruddy useless PIAT. It's all in a day's work for Lt Dick Coward and Sgt Tom Price on their second published adventure. After the horrors of D-Day, they find themselves plunged into even greater chaos and mayhem as they land in the deceptively tranquil countryside around Arnhem, Holland, as part of Operation Market Garden. What should be a pushover - the ingenious scheme that everyone thinks will end the war by Christmas - turns into Britain's biggest military disaster of the Second World War. But if it's a cock-up, by golly is it a glorious one. Rarely if ever have Allied soldiers acquitted themselves better than the British, Americans and Poles, as they fou