In September 1944 General Sir John ‘Shan’ Hackett, commander of the 4th Parachute Brigade, was severely wounded and taken prisoner during the Battle of Arnhem. I Was a Stranger is his moving account of what happened to him afterwards. It is less a war memoir than a story of friendship – a celebration of the quiet heroism of three Dutch women. In the following extract from I Was a Stranger we meet the then Brigadier John Hackett one week after the beginning of the attack when, as his depleted and poorly supplied force was at its last gasp, he was badly wounded in the stomach and leg.
