FREDERICK GEORGE TOPHAM
When the cry of the wounded rises above the din of combat, the medical orderly is compelled to respond. Amid the chaos of the opening minutes of Operation Varsity, the Allied airborne crossing of the River Rhine, Corporal Frederick George Topham was no different.
By the spring of 1945, as the end of World War II in Europe drew near, Allied armies had advanced from their Normandy beachhead to the frontier of the Third Reich. Poised to cross the great river, the last natural barrier between the Allied forces and Germany itself, 21st Army Group, commanded by the legendary Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, launched a coordinated assault to breach the Rhine.
Operation Plunder, begun on the night of 23 March 1945, unleashed the British Second and American Ninth Armies in amphibious assaults against German defences on the east bank of the Rhine. In support, Operation Varsity, the largest airborne offensive in
