During World War Two, Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter DSO, an officer in the Parachute Regiment, parachuted into Arnhem. He always brought an umbrella to wave at sentries since he had trouble remembering passwords. Additionally, he once broke down a German armoured car by inserting the umbrella into the driver's eye through the vision hole! He once calmly crossed a street under fire to rescue the pinned down Chaplain, Father Egan, and led a bayonet charge throughout the conflict while donning a bowler hat and waving an umbrella. Don't worry, I've got an umbrella, he answered in response to Father Egan's warning that gun and mortar fire was being directed towards the street.He answered, "Don't worry, I've got an umbrella," put it up, and led the two of them back to safety underneath it after Father Egan pointed out that the street was being shot at with guns and mortars. Another cop said that the umbrella wouldn't be much use to him, to which he responded, "Goodness Pat, what if it rains?" He was taken after his soldiers ran out of ammo and was injured by shrapnel.
He later escaped from the hospital with Captain Tony Frank, his second-in-command, joined the Dutch Resistance, and used a bicycle to travel around speaking to other British escapees from Arnhem while pretending to be deaf and dumb to hide the fact that he couldn't speak or understand Dutch. He also carried fake documents provided by the resistance, once assisting one of them.On his travels, he once assisted in rescuing a German Staff vehicle from a ditch without being recognised as a British escapee. In a remarkable turn of events, Bill Wildeboer, the Dutch local resistance commander who was hiding and assisting Major Tatham-Warter, was forced to flee the farmhouse he owned when a party of German officers—among them one of the men from the car—moved in. The Germans who were after them lived in the house with Tatham-Warter and the resistance leader. He eventually gathered 150 soldiers and brought them to the Rhine, where 30 Corps members ferrying them to safety while flashing a torch to British troops on the opposite side.
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