Arnhem vet dies at 86

A wartime paratrooper who had a miraculous escape at the 1944 battle of Arnhem has died after a short illness.

Geoffrey Van Ryssel of Mulberry Road, Bloxwich, was 86. "It was a very peaceful death," his widow Millie said today.

"He went into a coma and drifted away, with his family around him." Born in Ghent to a Belgian father and a Black Country mother, Mr Van Ryssel joined the British Army in 1940, and was head-hunted from the Parachute Regiment by the 21st Independent Parachute Company.

As one of the most elite units of the British Army, its job was to be first in at Arnhem in the infamous "Bridge Too Far" attack, marking the landing grounds for the gliders and paratroops behind.

In 2004, on the 60th anniversary of the doomed campaign, he told the Express & Star "a moment of inattention" in the front line at Arnhem almost cost him his life.

He stood up, presenting a brief target for a German machine-gun crew a few hundred yards away.

"I was looking up the road," he recalled. "Suddenly I was caught in this three or four-second burst. It was like a swarm. I felt I was enveloped by them. Somehow, I never got a scratch."

A machine-gunner himself, he later calculated that between 60 and 90 bullets buzzed around him, ripping his epaulettes, glancing off his steel helmet and wrecking the contents of his knapsack. A comrade ran to the same spot and was instantly killed.

After the war he resumed his former occupation as a metal pattern-maker. At the end of the war he also resumed playing his trumpet with local bands. After a heart attack at 50, he became self-employed.

Mr Van Ryssel, who died at Walsall Manor Hospital, leaves two daughters, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

In a tribute today the family said: "Looking back on his life, it is clear that Geoff was a man of immense strength, ethical conviction and determination; a brave soldier but one who hated war and its consequences."

The funeral service, a humanist ceremony, will be held at Streetly Crematorium on February 19.