This short snapshot of war (Kindle Single) is an eye-witness account of the Battle of Arnhem, by WWII veteran Victor Gregg, which leads us up to his capture and transport to Dresden, where the terrible firebombing was about to begin. Gregg goes on to relate this harrowing tale of survival in Dresden: A Survivor's Story.

'I invite the reader to travel the road alongside these men, many of whom are destined to be buried in some foreign field, others to survive and endeavour to forget, and others to live a life of mental torture as they try to adjust after the storms of battle have receded into the history books.’

–Victor Gregg, veteran of the Rifle Brigade and 10th Parachute Regiment.

This is the story of how Victor Gregg switched from being a rifleman to a birdman.

After sweeping through France and Belgium in the summer of 1944, the Allies were poised to enter the Netherlands to secure key bridges and towns along the Allied axis of advance. 

Gregg and his fellow riflemen are asked to volunteer for the Parachute Regiment, the staunch ‘once a rifleman always a rifleman’ overruled by a promise of extra leave. 

The British airborne forces landed some distance from their objectives and were quickly hampered by unexpected resistance. Only a small force was able to reach the Arnhem road bridge, and reinforcements were unable to advance north as quickly as anticipated, therefore failing to relieve the airborne troops according to schedule. After nine days of fighting, the shattered remains of the British 1st Airborne Division were withdrawn. 

The troops had been up against unimaginable odds, with countless tragic losses along the way. Gregg is subsequently captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Dresden, where the infamous and tragic bombings were about to begin.

Victor Gregg wrote a trilogy of memoirs: King’s Cross Kid, about his working-class childhood in London between the World Wars; Rifleman, about his life on the front line from Alamein and Dresden to the Fall of the Berlin Wall; and Soldier, Spy, about his life as a demobbed soldier returning to civilian life and all the challenges that entailed. 

He wrote Dresden, A Survivor’s Story to mark the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden that took place between 13 and 15 February 1945.