The fightings near St. Elizabeth Hospital on the 18th & 19th of September.

      Two battalions of the lst Parachute Brigade advancing to the bridge, are confronted by tanks and self-propelled guns, they have already suffered heavy losses in fierce street-fighting. In the night of Monday-Tuesday they are in the system of streets west of the St. Elizabeth Hospital, to this mazy area have also been directed the 11 th Parachute Battalion which forms part of the 4th Parachute Brigade landed on the Ginkelse Heide near Ede on Monday afternoon, and elements
of the 2nd Battalion South Staffordshires, who have been withdrawn from the defence of the landing zones near Wolfheze. The orders these troops have received from Divisional Headquarters are to push through to the road bridge at Arnhem and to relieve Frost's battalion from its encirclement. The 600 men at the bridge were fighting heavy, many already dead or wounded and short on ammunition.
On Tuesday at early dawn they launch their attack: the two parachute battalions via Onderlangs (the low road), the other two battalions along the Utrechtseweg 'Bovenover'  (the high road). The action in this narrow corridor between the deep railway cutting on one side and the river on the other side is a signal failure. Along Onderlangs the paratroops initially manage to penetrate to the Oude Haven, but then they are beaten back by a frontal German counter-attack supported by murderous fire from the brick-yard on the opposite bank of the river. With great difficulty, less than a hundred men succeed to regain their starting point, the Rhine Pavilion. Here they return at 8 a.m. At that time, the attack along the Utrechtseweg has been checked at the narrowest point of the corridor near the Municipal Museum and the offices of the P.G.E.M. (County Electricity Board). For a few hours the South Staffordshires, who form the vanguard, succeed in warding off the thrusts of the selfpropelled guns of the Hohenstaufen Division, but a about noon the Germans break through and repel them to the St. Elisabeth Hospital. There a chaotic situation develops which might well be said to be typical of the Battle of Arnhem.
          

General Urquhart, whom his troops have been unable to trace or contact since Sunday evening, because he had been cut off en route to Arnhem and had been compelled to seek safety by hiding in a house in this same area in order to avoid being killed or taken prisoner by the Germans, has in the meantime returned to Divisional Headquarters in Hartenstein. Since he realizes that the situation of his division is becoming critical - west of Oosterbeek German pressure is likewise increasing steadily, whilst attempts of the 4th Parachute Brigade to break through the German Sperrlinie near the Johannahoeve, north of the railway line Utrecht-Arnhem, are entirely ineffectual - he has ordered the llth Battalion to break off fighting on the Utrechtseweg and to retreat to a new, defensive line further west.
The battalion starts preparing for this withdrawal, as soon as the commanding officer has dispatched a runner to inform the South Staffordshires; however, they do not receive the message and are still under the impression that they can fall back on the positions of the llth Battalion, but when they have to give way to the German counter-attack they land up in the middle of a German column ready to march off. In the resulting confusion the british suffer heavy losses. Thus, of the four battalions wich have taken part in the attempted break-through to the bridge,only remnants succeed in falling back to Oosterbeek in the course of the day. To the battalion surrounded near the bridge this means that their only hope of rescue is the advent of the second army.
During the battle, The St. Elisabet Hospital, was used by British as well as German army doctors assisted by Dutch medical personel, to take care of the wounded on both sites. The civilian patiens were evacuated by the Germans. It often occured that they were operating on the enemy's soldiers. During the battle there also has been a truce, in order to evacuate the dead and wounded on both sites. Later in 1945 when The Netherlands became liberated, Arnhem was again a battlefield. The Hospital, in fact the whole city, was practical destroyed. The war had taken his toll. All of the population was evacuated right after the end of the 1944 fighting. Some civilians were executed for no reason and the city was plunderd. Many lost their homes. Even today, trenches are visible, bullet and granade damage are the silent whitnesses of this heroic battle.