Lieutenant Robert Alexander Vlasto

Robert Alexander Vlasto was born in Calcutta, India on February 9 1924 to Eileen and Alexander George Vlasto.

He served with the Kings Royal Rifle Corps before volunteering for airborne forces. He completed Parachute Course 99 in February 1944 and joined the 2nd Parachute Battalion.

'Robin' was a Lieutenant and the platoon commander of 1 Platoon, A Company at Arnhem. He was "relieved" to be going to Arnhem and stated on the day of the trip "the weather is glorious and everything seems to be ideal". Whilst on the way over on Sunday 17th September, he appears confident of the outcome, joking "I wonder whether we shall be drinking in Berlin, or Amsterdam within a week [...] we shall be having a party in Arnhem tonight!". In hindsight, he reflected "there would [have been] more chance of getting [the] Battalion together by day than night" and that if the operation was successful the war would have ended much earlier.

Vlasto had brought a bugle horn with him in imitation of Major-General John Frost's hunting horn which he planned to use to rally his own Platoon after he dropped. When he saw Frost and heard his horn he was apparently disgusted with himself for bringing his own and described it as "a waste of time and space". He later lost this Bugle but a 2nd Bn. Sergeant reunited him with it after the war. Despite a few casualties the drop went well and the "Huns seemed to have cleared out of the neighbourhood in a hurry". The Platoon set off on their 7 mile march towards Arnhem, meeting delirious civilians on the way. They also encountered an armoured car which hit two men but by the time they got a PIAT in position it had retreated.  

Vlasto stationed his platoon in a building near Arnhem bridge on Sunday, from which they could see little of the action on the bridge itself. At sometime on Tuesday night they had to move to A company headquarters a few houses north of them after their first two positions were burned out. He and his men sighted the first German tanks - a sight which Vlasto remembered finding hard to believe; he had not been briefed to expect much German armour. Whilst he and his men were armed with PIATs, the tanks knew to stay out of range. Eventually they were ordered to assemble under the bridge, where the wounded were sheltered in a dark recess. Meanwhile the German tanks moved about as they pleased "systematically blowing all the houses down". When a group of Germans tried to prepare Arnhem bridge to be blown, his men helped to drive them off. Of Jack Grayburn, Vlasto stated that he seemed to be in charge despite only being a Lieutenant. He described him as "tough, with a consuming hatred of Germans" but stated he was not a medal hunter.

By the time they were under the bridge, Grayburn was already wounded. It was claimed he was later killed by a German flamethrower. On Wednesday, Vlasto was sent west from the bridge to find a way out. Cornelius Ryan suggests that he was a "sacrificial lamb" used to divert the Germans' attention while the rest broke out" but Vlasto only comments that "I may have been used to create some sort of a diversion, but I don't know that for certain". His account of the breakout attempt and his capture follows:

"I took a couple of men and we headed towards the houses, but as soon as we started running we came under fire and got split up. I found myself alone. I turned around to look back at the bridge and discovered, to my surprise, that there was no one left underneath it". [Cornelius Ryan:] The firing had stopped and Vlasto "felt very alone". It was still daylight and he laid up in a small shed until dark . He could hear Germans all around him. At dark, he got out and tried to find a way through. It was while he was searching for a route out that he ran into a German patrol. "Fighting on was useless", he says, "so I just gave myself up".

He was taken prisoner of war at the bridge on the afternoon of Wednesday 20th September. From there he was moved to a large hall until dawn where other POWs were now being collected. He was then taken out of Arnhem to be interrogated then moved to a transit camp before ending up in Brunswick until the end of the war. He was interred in Oflag 79.

He later served in Palestine but relinquished his commission in October 1946 because of disability. He married Jill Pollock in 1947 with whom he had a son and a daughter. After the war he worked as a merchant banker and investor. He died on 1 October 2003. His wife died the following year.