On this day in military history…
As the Battle of Arnhem pushed into its second week, the situation in Oosterbeek had become unbearable. Around mid‑morning on Sunday, 24 September 1944, Colonel Graeme Warrack, the senior British medical officer, surveyed the grim conditions: nearly fifteen hundred wounded British soldiers strained the limited medical posts, with supplies of bandages, morphine and other essentials rapidly dwindling. The medical facilities—once provisioned to care for the injured—were now dangerously overcrowded and under-equipped.
Recognizing the urgency, Warrack sought out General Urquhart at Hartenstein, urging that a ceasefire be arranged—not as a measure of weakness, but as a necessary act of humanitarian aid. Midday found the British doctor, accompanied by a disguised lieutenant-commander and a Dutch medic, making their way to Hotel Schoonoord along Utrechtseweg to seek out a German counterpart.
There, Major Egon Skalka—the head of the German medical corps in the area—agreed that the wounded could not be left to suffer. He agreed to help initiate negotiations with higher authority, and, in a striking tableau of wartime camaraderie amid conflict, guided Warrack toward German lines in a captured British jeep, complete with a makeshift Red Cross flag and a POW on the hood to discourage hostile fire.
Their journey ended at the headquarters of German General Bittrich. With the Dutch doctor in tow, Warrack and Skalka presented their plea: a temporary, limited truce during which the wounded could be evacuated—no political maneuvering, no implication that the Allies were faltering in their resolve to continue fighting. General Bittrich granted a two‑hour ceasefire, set to begin at 1500 hours that afternoon, and even offered Warrack a bottle of brandy "for your general" as he departed.
As the clock struck three, guns fell silent. German ambulances, jeeps and transport vehicles advanced to collect the wounded. Those able to walk were directed toward St Elisabeth’s Hospital in Arnhem; the more grievously injured were loaded into vehicles bound for medical care, some even taken as far as Apeldoorn. In total, about 450 wounded were carried out of the embattled perimeter.
Yet the fragile warmth of this gesture was shattered that same afternoon. Outside the hospital, Captain Brian Brownscombe—a British doctor—was standing by the sidewalk when an SS soldier, without provocation, shot him dead. The soldier, later identified as Karl‑Gustav Lerch, claimed he had been ordered to act or was drunk; after the war, he was tried and executed for his crime.
This ceasefire—born of collegiality between enemy physicians—provided a desperately needed reprieve, yet it also underscored the brutal inconsistencies of war. Acts of mercy and recognition of shared humanity occurred side by side with unthinkable violence. The two‑hour armistice of 24 September saved hundreds of lives.
