Rain In the Carolinas, Umbrellas, and Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter, DSO

I was just talking to a friend about hurricane Florence and how, with the slow-moving storm turning to the southwest rather than continuing inland the rains were going to be epic and somehow umbrellas came into the conversation and I got to trot out my favorite umbrella story.

In no way meaning to diminish the human misery being experienced by the 15 million or so people being affected by the inundation, I couldn't stop thinking of Tatham-Warter and his umbrella.

The major was an officer commanding "A" Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion in Field Marshal Montgomery's failed attempts to capture the infrastructure made famous in the movie "A Bridge Too Far". The lightly armed Paras ended up facing a Panzer tank division and got murdered, some literally.

From his obituary in the Times, recounted at TathamFamilyHistory:

...Digby Tatham-Warter was famously depicted in A Bridge Too Far, Richard Attenborough's 1977 film of the Allied defeat at Arnhem in 1944, as a crazed toff leading a bayonet charge sporting an old bowler hat and a tattered umbrella. But his character, personality and achievements were substantially greater than suggested by the film's rather trite cameo. He actually did wander around the ever-reducing perimeter at Arnhem Bridge urging his (and other's) men on with the aid of a rolled umbrella, though there was neither bowler hat nor bayonet charge....MORE

Actually there was something of a bayonet charge, when Tatham-Warter disabled an armored car by poking the umbrella through the viewing slit and catching. the driver in the eye.
Anyhoo, this is what I thought of when the subject of umbrellas came up:



I believe that's a still from the movie, otherwise someone took the time to compose a perfectly focused photo in the middle of  the battle which would be as crazy as carrying an umbrella to war.