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Achtung, Achtung, welcome. You are listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Almari and with James Holland.

Historian, now, today is of course the 70th September, 2020.

And if you're a regular listener to this podcast and I'm sure many of you are, you're familiar that there is one particular military encounter that comes up again and again in our conversations.

Because I was raised on this story as a young man by a father in the airborne forces in the 60s and 70s who knew a load of the people who were there and so on.

So we're delighted to have some excellent guests to talk to today. James, who have we got?

Well, we've got Major General, Adrian Freer, who's a legend of the parachute regiment, albeit after 1945, of course.

I think Adrian, I'm right in saying that you joined the parachute regiment in 1972 and ended your career in the Balkans serving out there.

And we've also got Rich Moore, who's a great old local pal of mine. He used to serve in the regiment and is now doing all sorts of interesting things but also very heavily involved in the charity that we're here to talk about.

So we thought we'd just put some kind of sort of in from within the regiment kind of perspective on things.

Yeah. So Adrian, thank you so much for joining us. It's great to have you with us.

My father, when I was a young lad, wore a red beret and took me to see a bridge too far when I was eight.

And so that's my first point of contact with it and the fact that he had all sorts of robust opinions within what he regarded as the airborne tradition about the battle.

What was the view when you joined the parachute regiment in the early 70s about what had happened at Arnhem? Because it probably wasn't as headline a battle as it is now.

Well, I mean, I think it's always been at the heart of not any of the regiment but airborne forces tradition. I mean, most people will know that it that in essence, the ability to hold a bridge head across the lower Rhine in September 44 failed.

As an operation and we may well come on to talk about that a bit later on. But what actually happened over those sort of seven odd days with the first airborne division north of the Rhine has gone down in sort of regimental folklore, a lightly armed force facing heavy German armor and a very competent enemy in the Germans.

Many of the much of the literature today sometimes under plays the German what the Germans did and how effective they were.

And so the sort of fighting spirit and the sheer doggedness and tenacity of the first airborne division in holding out for as long as they did as a say is a centerpiece really of regimental folklore.

And remains so to this day even though clearly it's sort of 75 76 years ago.

Yeah, I mean, it is interesting how you know the parachute regiment remains one of I think if not the youngest regiment in the British Army isn't it?

And yet it's as we move forward and you know, regiments are cut and all the rest of it.

There's there's the parachute regiment remains absolutely at the heart of the British Army doesn't it?

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