EIGHTY years ago today, gliderman Peter Hill was involved in fierce fighting around the Dutch town of Arnhem as Allied forces tried to capture a crucial bridge over the River Rhine.

History now knows it as a bridge too far.

Peter Hill with his parents, Elizabeth and Harry. His father died when he was seven in 1929Peter, 22, whose mother, Elizabeth, lived for many years in Starmer Crescent, Darlington, was caught up in the largest airborne operation of the war – Operation Market Garden – which was going wrong and which would cost him his life, despite the brave efforts of another young man with local links to save him.

Peter, though, had played his part perfectly.

Parachutists and glidermen land at ArnhemThe plan behind Market Garden was to land about 41,000 Allied soldiers, with supplies, by parachute and glider, behind enemy lines in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. They were to capture and hold nine bridges over the many waterways, therefore preventing the Germans sending any reinforcements to the front line. This would allow the British and American forces in Belgium to steam north, meet up with the airborne troops within four days and cross the bridges before rolling into Germany with comparatively little resistance.

That was the plan.

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Peter – whose father, Harry, had died playing violin in a concert when he was just seven – had volunteered to join the Glider Pilot Regiment from the Army. After training, he was involved in D-Day, landing a tank in his Hamilcar glider near Ranville, in Normandy, for troops to pick up as they came off the beaches.

He, and his second pilot Tony Openshaw, stayed two days in France before being withdrawn to prepare for their next operation.

Parachutists landing at Arnhem

It was to fly 300 miles in the glider carrying two Bren Gun Carriers to Landing Zone Z at Oosterbeck, near Arnhem, ready for members of the 1st Battalion, the Border Regiment, who had been parachuted in, to collect and use to capture the crossings of the Rhine in Arnhem.

But the Germans had 100,000 troops in the area. They prevented the Allied ground forces entering from Belgium to relieve the airborne soldiers.

This left the parachutists and the glidermen trapped with the deep, fast-flowing Rhine at their backs to the north and the Germans approaching from the south.

Operation Market Garden did capture the towns of Eindhoven and Nijmegen, but it could not capture the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem.

Staff Serjeant Peter Burke HillPeter was one of hundreds of men driven by the German bombs onto the banks of the Rhine, where, ordered to withdraw, on the night of September 25-26, they queued for rescue boats.

But Peter could not swim. That dark night beside the deep, cold river, he was deeply concerned that he would not be able to make it across.

In the queue, he met Sgt David Hartley, whose shoulder had been injured by shrapnel. The pair bonded – perhaps over Darlington.

Previously, Sgt Hartley has been referred to as a “Darlingtonian”, but no one knew his story, but now Peter’s second cousin, David Oliver, has unearthed more details.

A newly discovered picture showing Sgt David Hartley, second from the left, talking to Major General Roy Urquhart, Commander of the First Airborne Division, immediately after his return from Arnhem. Sgt Hartley survived the warHe has found that Sgt Hartley was born in Basra, in Iraq, in 1921 where his father was an officer commanding British troops. Aged six, the boy came to England and went to Barnard Castle School, probably because his father had been stationed to Catterick. Officers’ children could be sent to private schools with the Army helping with the fees.

Sgt Hartley did give his home town as “Darlington”, but whether he ever lived there is unknown. His records at the time of Arnhem give York as his home.

There on the banks of the Rhine on the night of September 25-26 (80 years ago this coming Wednesday/Thursday), Sgt Hartley and Peter struck up a friendship.

“Peter told me that he could not swim and was very frightened of the water,” Sgt Hartley later told a wartime researcher. “I told him I would look after him.

“The first thing we did was take off our boots, and next was sit together right on the edge of the boat.

“We had just started when we received a mortar bomb right in the middle of the assault boat. We were in the water before we knew it.”

He grabbed Peter and, without panicking, they began to swim in the rescue position, with Sgt Hartley towing Peter behind him. They allowed the strong current to push them away from the danger of the boat crossing area which the Germans were shelling.

“Peter was a very good pupil, using his legs quite well,” said Sgt Hartley, “but he started to lag.

“The other side – what we could see of it – did not seem to be getting any nearer and I could really feel my shoulder stiffening up.

“I had a job to hold Peter and after a brief struggle, I lost him.

“I cannot remember getting out of the water, changing my clothes or being taken to a field hospital where a doctor took the rest of the shrapnel out of my shoulder.”

Peter was swept away down the Rhine and, more than 20 days later, his body was recovered near Ravenswaajj, 20-plus miles from where David had lost his last grasp on him.

Peter Hill's grave in Maurik is beautifully tendedStaff Serjeant Peter Burke Hill was buried in a nearby Roman Catholic cemetery at Maurik in the only military grave.

His mother visited the grave and decided that he could stay there rather than be taken to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Oosterbeck where 1,684 of his colleagues lie.

Local people at Maurik have adopted Peter’s grave and use it as the focal point of their remembrance commemorations.

“I have visited Maurik and met the kind people who tend his grave,” says his second cousin, David, who is in Arnhem for this weekend’s 80th anniversary commemorations. “It is truly humbling.

“I remarked to them that I always felt for Peter lying alone away from his comrades and one of them, Hein Scharma, replied: ‘He has family here now, he is not alone.’”

Peter’s mother, Elizabeth (whose maiden name was Burke and who was usually known as Betty) lived with her sister Margaret in Starmer Crescent until they died in the 1960s.

From the YouTube video, in Dutch, showing how Peter Hill's grave is tended in Maurik