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Father Bernard Mary Egan
Unit : Headquarters, 2nd Parachute Battalion
Awards : Military Cross
Father Egan was the 2nd Battalion's Roman Catholic chaplain, and he had been long associated with the parachute regiment, having served in the post for the 1st Para Brigade in North Africa. At the Battle of Tamera, he was with the battalion when a German aircraft dropped a bomb very accurately onto Battalion HQ. No one was killed as a result of this blast, but it left a thirty foot wide crater in the ground and had propelled large chunks of earth into the air. Father Egan received severe bruises as these lumps came crashing to earth.
Throughout the battle at Arnhem Bridge, the Padre frequently visited the wounded who had been packed into the cellars of the houses from which the airborne troops were fighting, and he did his best to tend them, though medical supplies, from morphia to dressings, were in woefully short supply.
Tuesday saw many humourous moments in spite of the perilous conditions. He met John Frost coming out of a toilet, who by this time was, like anyone else, tired, dirty, and unshaven. However his face lit up when he saw Egan, and he reported to him "Father, the window is shattered, there's a hole in the wall, and the roof's gone. But it has a chain and it works". Sometime after, he was trying to make his way across a street to visit the wounded in the house on the other side, but the area was being heavily bombarded at the time and he didn't feel able to cross, and so took shelter wherever he could find it. He then caught sight of the indomitable Major Tatham-Warter calmly strolling up the middle of the street, carrying his trademark umbrella. The Major saw Egan sheltering and made his way over to him, whereupon he opened the umbrella over the Padre's head and beckoned him across the street. Egan was quite reluctant to follow and pointed out the mortar barrage to Tatham-Warter, who replied "Don't worry, I've got an umbrella". He later visited Battalion HQ, which had been relentlessly shelled during the day and was now on fire. As he made his way amongst the wounded in the cellar, Sergeant Jack Spratt, a man regarded as the battalion joker, said to him "Well, Padre, they're throwing everything at us but the kitchen stove". He had barely finished this sentence before the building had received a direct hit, which caused part of the ceiling to fall in and showered those in the cellar with plaster and assorted filth. The occupants then noticed that through the ceiling had fell the kitchen stove. Spratt said "I knew the bastards were close, but I didn't believe they could hear us talking".
During Tuesday evening, Father Egan was on the stairs at Battalion HQ when shells crashed through the building, and this caused him to fall down two flights to the ground floor, where he lost consciousness. He awoke to find that a mortally wounded soldier was lying near him. Egan began to crawl over to him, but as he did so the building was shaken by yet more explosions and he fell unconscious once more. He next awoke to find that the wounded man had since died, but also that his own clothes were on fire, as was the rest of the room. Egan rolled about trying to put out the flames with his hands, and he succeeded in doing so, but he found that he was not able to move his legs. He crawled over to a nearby window and tried to pull himself through it, and he was assisted in doing so by Lieutenant Buchanan, who then dropped him into the arms of Jack Spratt, whom the Padre had met earlier. Taken to the cellar with the rest of the wounded, Egan was laid to rest on his stomach as it had transpired that his hands and back were dotted with shrapnel splinters, and also his right leg had been broken.
Captured after the battle, Father Egan was taken to the St Elizabeth Hospital, and later to the large POW hospital at Obermassfeldt, where the man recovering in the neighbouring bed was none other than Lt-Colonel Frost.