April 10 – Arnhem-Nijmegen, The Netherlands AM. Today we are continuing the trip we made last year to several WWII sites in the Pacific by visiting significant locations for Operation Market Garden. This was the doomed to failure paratroop and glider offensive planned by British Field Marshal Montgomery to capture and hold several bridges in the Netherlands. The Dutch resistance had warned of a heavy German presence in the area including several divisions of panzers. Monty discounted the reports and didn't believe that they were accurate. Monty had a miserable record in WWII and yet to keep the peace between the Allies Eisenhower kept giving him operations to plan and priority on supplies. Luckily for our side, after Market Garden he was never given a major offensive to plan and execute again.
If you saw the movie "A Bridge Too Far" you are familiar with this operation. Monty used Polish paratroops in the plan and when they were given their instructions the Polish commander asked if he was serious. He went on to add that it would never work. Monty said they were going and so the Polish jumped, only to be all but wiped out in the process. Monty claimed that the failure was because the Polish didn't achieve their objective, ignoring the fact that it was his orders that got them killed. What an ego that little nitwit had. Of course, our own General George S. Patton also had an ego. The difference is George backed his up with victories; Monty backed his up with lip. The British soldier was as good as or better than most but their top leadership was lacking in foresight and overly supplied with unjustified ego.
Now that I've properly set the tone for the day, let's do the touring. Our first stop was at a paratroop drop zone outside Arnhem near Renkurm. This deceptively serene flatland was one of the insertion points for the operation. Today only a small pen of sheep inhabits the area. There's a monument there to the troops who landed and died in this overly ambitious endeavor. It gave me chills to stand on the small hill behind the monument a look out over the plains below. Since these were low altitude drops the noise of the aircraft would have been very loud.
Adjacent to this area was a landing zone for the glider forces. The gliders not only carried soldiers but also some equipment, light artillery, vehicles etc. Unfortunately the design had the men up front and the equipment in the back. When the glider crashed, as many did, the equipment was thrown forward onto the men. The gliders came in before the paratroops as they could be released at altitude and flown silently into their landing zones to prepare the drop zone for the paratroops. Glider loses on landing (read as crashing) were high.
The larger drop zones were south of Nijmegen. This forced the heavily loaded paratroopers to walk a long way just to reach the fighting. The US 82nd Airborne had to walk almost 12 kilometers with 80 pound packs just to reach the battle. You have to feel at least a little sorry for the British troops. They were dropped in close proximity to all the Panzers that Montgomery didn't believe existed. They were severely outgunned and suffered very high casualties. Despite all this the British 2nd Battalion actually controlled one side of the bridge in Arnhem. Unfortunately help never arrived and the battalion was mostly wiped out. When they ran out of ammunition Frost jumped in the Rijn River and somehow floated downstream to come ashore in friendly territory. The new bridge in Arnhem is named the Frost Bridge in his honor.
The battle is a bit complicated to describe in detail. I'll just summarize by saying that after initial success the Germans counter attacked and the Allied forces found themselves inside a temporarily defensible perimeter with overwhelming German forces on three sides and the Rijn River on the forth side. With the Germans pressing in on three sides, with heavy armor on one side, they had no choice but to steadily shrink their perimeter as they escaped across the river to the allied held side.
The Hertenstein Manor in the small town of Oosterbeek was Allied HQ during the battle. The house is now The Airborne Museum. It has maps, photos, displays, dioramas and equipment from the battles in and around Arnhem and Oosterbeek. It's a well thought out museum. The old Sherman tank in the yard looks like it could drive off into battle today.
From the Airborne Museum we headed to the Arnhem-Oosterbeek War Cemetery. Seems appropriate that we visited the drop and landing zones first, the museum of the battle second and the casualties of the battle last. The graves are mostly British and Polish as they were the ones who fought and died in this area of the fighting. It has a very different look than a US military cemetery as they use rounded top, rectangular headstones rather than the cross we use. The cemetery is well tended. Grass covers most of the area but the space around and between the headstones is like a flowerbed. In front of and between each of the headstones there are flowers and plants that obviously receive care. Our guide told us that the people of the area, in gratitude for the sacrifices of these men, come and work on the landscaping on a volunteer basis. Whatever they are doing, it's working. The place looks great.
However, having just seen the insertion points and read about the battles at the museum, the attractiveness of the place was overshadowed by the sense of loss you carried with you from the earlier visits. The headstones of the British have a rounded top and those of the Polish have a rounded tent-like shape. Most of the headstones bear the name and unit of the soldier interred there. I saw several headstones that simply said, "A Solider of the 1939-1945 War, September 1944". And across the bottom, "Known unto God" with a simple cross etched between the two.
There is one American buried here, R. Tice. He volunteered for duty with the Polish forces and died serving with them at the age of 22. Our guide knew we would ask so he had done his research. He led us directly to his grave. After a very sobering visit we headed back to the ship for lunch and sail to Nijmegen.
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