Arnhem veteran, 97, set to parachute into city as part of memorial display 75 years on

A 97-year-old veteran is set to join a mass parachute jump over Arnhem, recreating the scene 75 years ago, with Prince Charles watching on.

Former paratrooper Sandy Cortmann made an emotional return to Arnhem in the Netherlands on Thursday to start the 75th commemoration of Operation Market Garden.

Mr Cortmann will join the mass parachute jump on Saturday, provided he passes a final medical check, and will be watched from the ground by Prince Charles, the Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment.

Over 1,500 parachutists from eight nations, including serving paratroopers from Britain’s 16 Air Assault Brigade, will drop on Saturday onto Ginkel Heath, the original landing zone during the battle for the bridge over the Rhine.

Mr Cortmann, from Aberdeen, was just 22 when he jumped into battle in September 1944 before being taken prisoner by the Germans for a year. He said he was “absolutely terrified” from the moment once he landed.

"When the fighting started we were just in amongst it," he said. “You just hear bangs and machine guns."

He recalled being told to help quieten a young solider calling out repeatedly for his mother. "I crawled out, I just touched his hand, grabbed it and he died," he said.

"I thought, what a thing to happen. I was choking, but I was alive."

Mr Cortmann said he felt "very emotional" when he earlier visited a cemetery where a fallen friend named Gordon is honoured.

A mortar shell killed his friend, who he said had a “happy smiling face” instantly during the operation in Holland.

"As far as I know a mortar bomb landed at Gordon's feet and boom, blown Gordon to bits," he said.

"Later on that day I was coming up the street there was a boot on the pavement and I sort of kicked it before I realised the foot was still in the boot, that must have been Gordon's foot.

"Telling it now, shocking, at the time you just went 'bye Gordon'. That was it."

He added: "I often wonder if any of his family are still alive and if they are I would like to meet them just to say I knew Gordon.

"I wanted to come back, I wanted to see Gordon's stone so I could look at him and speak to him and just say 'hi pal' and think about him for a wee while."

After the war Mr Cortmann worked as a plumber and had two children with his wife, all three of whom have now passed away.

Alana Davidson, 27, who helps look after the veteran at the Fairview nursing home in Aberdeen and travelled with him to the Netherlands, said he still led an independent life.

"I've never seen him this happy before," she said of his trip.

As veterans, family members, visitors and local nationals descend on the Dutch city to mark 75 years since the operation, Mr Cortmann says he doesn’t deserve the attention he is receiving but is looking forward to his parachute jump on Saturday.

"I hope I get a cup of tea from somebody," he joked.

The head of the Army, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, also in Arnhem for the commemoration said: "This year…is one of the last few opportunities to celebrate the extraordinary heroism of the dwindling band of veterans who share the unique and spine-tingling distinction of being able to say: ‘I fought at Arnhem’.”

Veteran paratrooper Arnold ‘Arnie’ Hutchinson, 95, says it’s important for him to return to Arnhem each year to “pay homage to the boys of my Regiment who did a lot of work and didn’t come home”.

As a soldier in 7thBattalion of the Parachute Regiment, part of the 6th British Airborne Division (that did not deploy on Operation Market Garden), Mr Hutchinson said he avoided the “trap of fighting in Arnhem”.

Instead, his unit fought in the Ardennes, the infamous Battle of the Bulge the following winter, where he says: “the frost bite almost killed us instead of the Germans!”

He has returned to Arnhem for many years, “to be thankful for those that sacrificed everything,” he told The Telegraph.

“It’s a special duty in a way, to be thankful that we survived when so many others didn’t.”